BIOLOGY 1M03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Baculum, Erectile Dysfunction, Genetic Drift
Document Summary
Balancing selection (heterozygote advantage related to malaria resistance) Baculum: penis bone in most animals (in: most primates, most rodents, all bats, most carnivores, lost in: humans, rabbits, whales, marsupials ) Humans have frequent short mating compared to other primates whose mating period is longer and less frequent. Hypothesis: this bone was lost in humans in response to sexual selection for honest advertisement : erectile dysfunction can be a consequence of poor health, or mental illness (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) Sexual selection is intense in elephant seals and is driven b male- male competition (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) (cid:2) 90% males don"t reproduce: they have a really high variation of reproduction success. Polyandry (mating with many males) is advantageous, them may prevent one male from monopolizing all of the eggs. Kill male so female can mate with multiple mates. Could be a mechanism of rejection, if mating didn"t occur.
