Biology 1001A Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Red Queen Hypothesis, Sexual Selection
28 Nov 2017
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In some environments, individuals benefit from sex: sex generates variation! No, because if you are alive this means that you are well equipped to survive the environment therefore your offspring would benefit from being the same as you. How to explain sexually dimorphic traits and costly traits that reduce survival: many traits are sexually dimorphic in association with one gender and not the other. Sometimes these traits are favourable and sometimes they are detrimental. Intrasexual: males develop weapons to fight each other. Intersexual: males develop ornaments to impress females. The distinction can be blurry: some male birds make and decorate homes for female birds it appears that they do it to impress the females. However, when they go in to actually mate, other male birds will come and sabotage the place to make the female upset and possibly ruin the male birds chances with her.
