Disassortative mating (original) (raw)

Disassortative mating (also known as negative assortative mating or heterogamy) is a mating pattern in which individuals with dissimilar phenotypes mate with one another more frequently than would be expected under random mating. Disassortative mating reduces the mean genetic similarities within the population and produces a greater number of heterozygotes. The pattern is character specific, but does not affect allele frequencies. This nonrandom mating pattern will result in deviation from the Hardy-Weinberg principle (which states that genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of other evolutionary influences, such as "mate choice" in this case).