Sexual Selection: Testing the Alternatives - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

The study of sexual selection is currently growing faster than ever in its history. After natural selection, sexual selection is Darwin's next most important contribution to evolutionary theory. However, it is only in the last decade and a half that the process has received wide recognition and its genetical and behavioral dynamics formalized. This has led to some of the most divisive debates concerning the nature of adaptation since the controversy over group selection in the 1960s. Do females choose mates who provide them with better adapted offspring or not? Debates over this issue have spawned a plethora of alternative models and hypotheses which lead to quite different conclusions about the process of sexual selection. In addition, what factors determine which sex controls mate assortment, and what costs of natural selection limit the process, are more complex issues than was formerly thought. This, and the problems of measuring the strength of sexual selection, have made the discrimination between alternative models a most difficult task. The essays in this volume sort out the conflicting models, suggest a number of tests for discrimination among them, and provide a general guide to the problems of sexual selection and the systems in which future research seems likely to be most fruitful.

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