most of the organisms in question do not have the cognitive capacity to “strategize” in the human sense of the word, so what is a strategy? here, a strategy is an underlying rule for making decisions about a certain behaviour. a strategy provides an organism with a set of tactics that are adaptive in various circumstances. a tactic is an action taken to achieve a specific goal. for example, a wolf encounters a fallen tree and its strategy is defined by two tactics that may allow the wolf to pass the obstacle: jump over it or crawl under it. considering the current environmental conditions, the surroundings, and the size of the tree, the wolf will decide between the tactics dictated by its strategy. in the context of a mating system, this means that individuals in a given population have strategies that allow them to obtain mates in different ways to maximize their reproductive success given their phenotypic, environmental, or social circumstances.