Talk:Sexual selection

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Mechanisms

There should be coverage of different poroposed mechanisms: Fisher's run-away process, direct benefits, and sensory exploitation should be included.

Also, the idea that female choice is more common, or strong, in more intellignet species is bunk.

--Pete Hurd

Bateman's principle

I don't know why Bateman's principle is only discussed under sexual dimorphism, belongs earlier

epigenetics

I removed the following:

The field of epigenetics is broadly concerned with the competence of adult organisms within a given sexual, social, and ecological niche, which includes the development of mating competences, e.g. by mimicking adult behavior.

This is idiosyncracy. "Epigenetics is the study of heritable gene expression that occurs without a change in DNA sequence. " http://biology.ecsu.ctstateu.edu/courses/molgen/Epigenetics

AxelBoldt, Sunday, April 14, 2002

prudery??

The following statement is made in the article:

"Ambiguous combinations of both types of selection acting on the same traits is usually referred to as natural selection. Some accounts refer to natural selection as strictly ecological and as distinct from sexual, but this appears to be a holdover from Victorian sexual prudery, and further fails to distinguish combinations of the two "natural" processes from other concepts of evolution, such as evolution of societies."

It's true that by 'natural selection' Darwin meant, essentially, 'ability to survive'. As far as he was concerned sexual selection was a different concept, introduced to explain phenomena such a peacock tails, which would seem to be a hindrance rather than a help to survival. What does this have to do with Victorian 'sexual prudery'. As for the point about social evolution, how is this relevant? Darwin didn't even use the term 'evolution' much, so this is surely an irrelevance - a mere quibble over terminology, not meaning. Paul B 16:51, 21 March 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. Prudery has got nothing to do with the "split" between natural and sexual selection. And I've no idea what that bit about "evolution of societies" is on about. --Plumbago 08:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for the inadvertant resurrection of the phrase in my edit yesterday. I had recently downloaded the markup of the page, and thought I was editing it (offline), but I accidentally used a version I had stored a few months ago as the basis of my edit. It included the phrase, and it's one of the things I had decided not to change. I'll confirm that no other recent changes were similarly affected.--Johnstone 23:00, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Chimpanzee theory

I have removed the following since it lacks a reference:

"It has subsequently been theorized that this may have evolved because males tend to prefer to mate with females who are relatively youthful and healthy (and who are thus more likely to be fertile and survive pregnancy), and hairlessness is generally indicative with youthfulness. The general physiological resemblance between adult humans and adolescent chimpanzees (adult humans resemble young chimpanzees to a greater extent than they resemble young humans or adult chimpanzees) has recently been proposed as supportive evidence of this (the supposition being that the selection occurred at a time when the ancestors of humans resembled chimpanzees.)" [Includes my minor copyedit.]

--Johnstone 01:38, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

problem sentence?

I haven't read Fisher's stuff, but logically, didn't he mean the following? (My additions bolded)

However, 'sexual selection' typically refers to the process of female choice. R.A. Fisher pointed out that this female preference could be under genetic control and therefore subject to a combination of prior natural and sexual selection just as much as the qualities of the males that are actually 'preferred'.

Tony 00:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Largest vertebrate SSD?

A larger sexual size dimorphism in vertebrates has been documented.

Text from this article - "The largest sexual size dimorphism in vertebrates is the shell dwelling cichlid fish Neolamprologus callipterus in which males are up to 30 times the size of females."

Text from Photocorynus spiniceps article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photocorynus_spiniceps) - "The male spends its life fused to its much larger female counterpart, which in some species are up to half a million times greater in mass."

Apparent source - "Dimorphism, parasitism, and sex revisited: Modes of reproduction among deep-sea ceratioid anglerfishes", Theodore W. Pietsch, Ichthyological Research (2005) 52(3): 207-236. http://uwfishcollection.org/staff/Dimorphism.pdf

-- Sharon Rose