Questions tagged [sexual-selection]
The concepts of mate choice and competition over eligible members of the opposite sex in animals, including humans.
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Is there a way to measure the handicap principle?
The handicap principle is used as an explanation for some genetic traits, such as bright tails in male peacocks. However, it seems that this principle could be used to justify sexual selection of ...
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Method of determining base values of traits in isolated populations
Prelude: I came across a discussion about the correct formula for calculating the average IQ of offspring, which goes something like the following
$$ 100 + \frac35 \left( \left(\text{father's IQ} + \...
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Why is "mutual search" of some disadvantage/loss of power? (in Darwin's The Descent of Man)
I read a book "The Descent of Man" from Charles Darwin. What is the reason for the following statement?
"It would be no advantage and some loss of power if both sexes were mutually to ...
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What determines whether a trait brought out through sexual selection is transmitted only to offspring of the same sex or of both sexes?
First of all, let me apologize for my amateurishness. I have no background in biology. Please bear with me.
My question relates to sexual selection, or specifically its most prominent manifestations:
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Does lack of adaptations for sperm competition necessarily shows the species are monogamous/serially monogamous/polygynous?
On the one hand adaptations for sperm competition, such as large testes, mate guarding, etc. are used to support that female in species are promiscuous.
On the other hand we know multiple eusocial ...
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How is sexual selection evolutionarily stable?
It seems like in any population subject to evolutionary pressure, sexual attractiveness will inversely correlate with other kinds of reproductive fitness. If you see a peacock with a small tail ...
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Why do the two sexes have different reproductive costs and capabilities?
Is there an evolutionary explanation that shows why the reproductive costs are mostly on the female sex?
And therefore, why do males can potentially have more offspring?
Does that happen to create ...
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Large study showing that attraction to only the same sex has to do with your genes, published where?
Can someone please help me out and find and link me the study from a couple of years ago that showed how only same sex attraction, when the male cant become attracted to a woman, it has to do with ...
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How does natural selection explain sexual display?
As I understand it, animals sometimes grow more vibrant colors, bigger feathers, elaborate dances, build shiny nests, all to impress the other sex. However, these are all superfluous to survival -- ...
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Are there examples of animals being sexually attracted to another species more than to their own?
I just thought that from the perspective of a female domestic cat, a male bobcat probably looks like the archetype of a perfect mate. As tall, strong, muscular and mighty as it possibly gets. Clearly ...
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Why are (some) male humans sexually attracted to the breasts of female humans? [closed]
Many male humans are sexually attracted to the breasts of female humans. Is there an evolutionary reason for this?
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Isn't sexy son hypothesis circular?
Sexy son hypothesis.
It states that females are attracted to certain traits in males, because these traits will be attractive in her sons either. But isn't this circular?
Like "I'm attracted to that ...
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Is the deep ocean fish look ugly because due to darkness there is no visual sexual selection? [closed]
Is the deep ocean fish look ugly because due to darkness there is no visual sexual selection? If so, is there a common notion of beauty between humans and animals?
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Can diet, supplementation and/or drugs affect sexual dimorphism?
After puberty, can certain diets, exercise, and/or possible drugs affect masculine/feminine dimorphism in adults? We know dimorphism and/or morphology is a product of genes, but to what extent can ...
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Is a female spider, well-fed by sexual cannibalism, less likely to mate again?
The Wikipedia page on sexual cannibalism (e.g. female spiders eating their mates) currently has a statement that sounds wrong to me, but I don't feel expert enough to edit it out:
An additional ...
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Killing more attractive mates -- intersexual selection strategy? [closed]
Is this the affinity or core part of intersexual selection (males fighting for access to females)?
If females are bound to flock to objectively more attractive man 'A' in the majority of cases, would ...
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Many black people I've met have bigger lips than white people, why? [duplicate]
I noticed that many black-ish people I've met have bigger lips than the white-ish people I've met. However, not all black-ish people have big lips.
Is there any explanations in terms of natural ...
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Is there a distinction between the fisherian runaway theory and Fisher's sexy son theory?
In many websites/books they are referred to as part of the same process whereby:
"runaway" describing that the process continues even after traits become maladaptive
the "sexy son theory" explains ...
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Is mate choice in non-human primates MHC-dependent?
Whether the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) affects or not mate choice in humans seems mired in controversy at the moment. Without implying that looking at non-human primates would solve this ...
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Does sperm weight causes sex ratio?
Chromosome X in female sperm is heavier than male Y chromosome. Does it causes difference in fertility of sperm and heavier female sperm is unable to fertilize better than male sperm?
This is given ...
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How is "selection" best defined?
There is natural selection but there is also sexual selection which some regard as a category of natural selection. There is also artificial selection (by humans). The question is, what is a most ...
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Isn't heritability more important to genic capture than just genetic variance?
Rowe & Houle (1996) give two criteria for the selection of costly female choice:
Condition dependence of sexually selected traits
High genetic variance in condition
Regarding heritability, ...
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Why would a human female have a sexual display despite male biased operational sex ratio? [closed]
why would a human female have a sexual display despite male-biased operational sex ratio?
In human society there is a male-biased sex ratio, due to female child rearing, which results from anisogamy. ...
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What are the 2 general systems to understand the whole natural world? [closed]
In Graham Bell's book Selection, it's written:
To some it may be a cause of regret that the natural world cannot be understood in terms of a single set of rules and laws, but at least, so far as ...
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Is there a kind of 'rule' which decides whether the male of female is bigger?
In human race usually males are larger than females, and probably is this for all primates. But some animals there are the females bigger, but what determines whether the male or female should be ...
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Is human "sperm warfare" a concept supported by biology?
I've recently read the "Sperm wars" book by Robert Baker. It deals with human sexuality and infidelity. The main premise of the book is that human male has different kinds of sperm:
Regular sperm ...
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Why some traits are more desirable in the sexual selection?
For example, why do peacock females choose males with the biggest tail? If there is no advantage in such tail.
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Why does female's age of puberty inform on mating system?
Reading from Does increased calorie intake cause increase in libido in humans?, @AlexStone says:
I'm aware that humans have a dual mating strategy - somewhere between pair bond and casual mating. ...
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Are there examples of selection on males influencing female phenotypes?
I've been studying selection on female body color in a sexually dimorphic species and am intrigued by the possibility that selection on males, whether it be through sexual or natural selection, may ...
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Follow-up to The Red Queen by Matt Ridley? [closed]
I just finished reading The Red Queen: Sex and the evolution of human nature by Matt Ridley. Since this book is over 20 years old, I was wondering if more recent research made part of the book ...
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Why can't men produce milk, just like women? [duplicate]
This might seem a bit weird, but why can only women produce milk? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to our species if all humans could produce it? I can't think of any reason only one gender would need ...
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Role of drift in evolution of sexually dimorphic traits
Is there a model for predicting how drift can affect the evolution of a sexually dimorphic (SD) trait? I've been trying wrap my mind around this paradoxical question; sexually dimorphic traits evolve ...
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term for species that produces males only to mate with mother or sisters
In reading about unique reproductive strategies I've run into two closely related and comparatively unique mechanics. Both involved a female who was born 'pregnant' with at least a male, but the male ...
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Can sexual selection operate in temperature dependent sex determining organisms?
Or more broadly, are distinct forms of genetic inheritance (ie. sex chromosomes) needed for sexual selection?
My thinking was that since there are no sex determining loci, there could not be linkage ...
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Is there a mechanism by which mammals lose interest in a partner after mating?
I'm reading the book called "Cupid's poison arrow", which revolves around a rather simple assumption: most mammals, including humans have a genetic program that is responsible for ever increasing ...
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Are we more attracted to people of the same ethnicity? [closed]
Are humans more attracted to people from their own ethnic groups? I ask this because most of the time people have relationships with people of their own ethnicity, and I wonder if it's purely social, ...
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Is the golden ratio of anatomic measurements universally beneficial for sexual reproduction? [closed]
It is often claimed, in popular media, that the golden ratio (Fibonacci series) in for example some face measurements is aesthetically (and hence reproductively) attractive with respect to the humans. ...
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What is genodiversity good for?
I saw some documents which were trying to say that they can prove via sweat smell selected by women that humans are developed to find a partner with similar genes. At the first glance, I refused it as ...
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Selection Pressure on Orca Whale Coloration
What is the proposed selection pressure that leads to the distinctive coloration of Orca whales? I can find nothing in the literature.
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Why do we have more male infants born?
For every 104 male babies, we have 100 female babies and there are statistics which are more reliable. (Those tell us that we have 997 female infants born per 1000 male infants born.) What is the ...
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Why estimate linear and full (linear, quadratic, and correlational) selection coefficients separately?
"We then fitted a linear regression including all three life-history
traits to estimate the vector of linear selection gradients, β, for
each sex (Lande and Arnold 1983). A quadratic regression ...
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Is sexual selection evolutionarily advantageous?
Our biology teacher says that peacocks will soon become extinct because of bigger and bigger (and heavier and heavier) tails. Why natural selection did not eliminate sexual selection?
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Why does sex last so long?
I wonder why (especially human) sex lasts longer than just a few seconds?
My thought is that the shorter it takes a man to ejaculate, the lesser is the risk that he gets interrupted by a rival or a ...
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Do gibbons have a monogamous sexuality?
the question is already in the title. If possible, it might be extended to:
Have animal taxa (mammal) who tend to live in a family structure have a monogamous sexuality? Or are there cases of these ...
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Does unequal dominance mean the X-chromosome should be a coldspot for antagonistic variation?
Sexually antagonistic genetic variation, in a simple model, will persist if the benefit to one sex is (near) equal to the cost in the other, otherwise the polymorphism will be selected out of the ...
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Evolution of sexually concordant genetic variation on the X-chromosome
It was theorised in 1984 that sexually antagonistic genetic (SA) variation should more easily evolve on the X-chromosome. This is partly because female beneficial/male deleterious mutations face less ...
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Why are men stronger than women?
What are the evolutionary explanations for why women are physically weaker than men (on average), and is this difference adaptive? See figure one here.
I suppose that something puts pressure on men ...
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Distribution of fitness in wild populations
If I get out in the wild observe wild populations and measure the distribution of fitness $f(w)$ in a given population. What will I find out? Will I observe a Gaussian distribution, a Poisson ...
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What is a sex-biased gene?
How do you define a male-biased gene and a female-biased gene as they are found in the abstract of this article.
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Definition of Sexual Selection?
How do you define Sexual Selection (SS)?
(One might want to subdivide SS into intra- and inter- SS to answer)
Is SS clearly different from Natural Selection (NS)?
Is SS nested within NS or are NS ...
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