15 ms·

When sexual selection can lead to a decline in the capacity for survival

121 points by sparaker 9y ago

bad_user 9y ago
> But the evolutionary mechanism behind this novelty is not adaptation by natural selection, in which only those who survive pass on their genes, allowing the species to become better adapted to its environment over time. Rather, it is sexual selection by mate choice, in which individuals pass on their genes only if they’re chosen as mates. TFA has a weird definition for natural selection. Evolution has no preferences and sexual selection is natural selection.
- foglerek 9y ago
  Agreed. This is more akin to evolution being stuck in a suboptimal (and perhaps a dead-end) local minima - but it is still natural selection as more pleasing features = survival on an individual scale.
  - pharrlax 9y ago
    Small aside: local minimum. Minima is plural (like datum/data).
  - ggggtez 9y ago
    Complex systems can spend a long time following gradient descent without reaching the local optimal. For all we know, it's features have other advantages, like scaring off predators. Traits need to be considered with the ones they compete against. It's impossible to judge the bird in isolation.
- azakai 9y ago
  > sexual selection is natural selection It's a matter of definition, I think. Darwin made a distinction between natural selection and sexual selection, > Sexual selection was first proposed by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species (1859) and developed in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), as he felt that natural selection alone was unable to account for certain types of non-survival adaptations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection So the distinction the article here makes is a reasonable one with a long history. But more recently, the terms are often defined as non-distinct, > Factors that affect reproductive success are also important, including sexual selection (now often included in natural selection) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
  - posterboy 9y ago
    two sides of one coin, init? Edit: I mean, sexual selection is the pinhole of reproductive success, whereas other selective mechanisms are mediated by death, which is quite the opposite.
- devnull255 9y ago
  Evolution happens because of natural selection. It is the narrative of natural selection and does not always have a happy ending. The subtitle of the article is just plain wrong. Of course natural selection explains "the too sexy birds", it just can't predict how long the evolutionary span will be.
lisper 9y ago
The puzzlement over the apparent reproductive disadvantages of wing-singing is simply a reflection of a misunderstanding of how evolution works. Evolution does not select for the reproductive fitness of species, it selects for the reproductive fitness of genes. And it does not select for the absolute fitness of genes, but rather for their fitness relative to competing alleles with respect to a particular environment. The genes for wing-singing are better at reproducing themselves in an environment where manakins already exist than the genes for alternative strategies for finding mates. That this might hurt the reproductive fitness of the other genes that go into making club-wing manakins matters not at all to the wing-singing genes. Genes don't think these things through. Genes don't think at all. Some genes build things that think, and some of those things that think end up being puzzled by the behavior of genes, including the very genes that built them.
- dekhn 9y ago
  You're describing this viewpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio... however I don't think it's really an accepted (in terms of evidence) theory that explains all evolution. I think most biologists think that evolution selects at multiple levels (although likely the underlying processes are much more complex than just that). After all, no real visible phenotype is truly based on a single gene, but rather the dynamic interplay of hundreds of gene products over the course of the organism's development.
  - lisper 9y ago
    > You're describing this viewpoint Yes. > evolution selects at multiple levels That's just another way of saying that evolution selects for reproductive fitness with respect to a particular environment. If a gene is part of an organism, then the other genes in that organism are part of that gene's environment. The aggregation of genes into organisms is itself an evolutionary adaptation (as is the aggregation of organisms into more complex organisms like eukaryotic cells and multi-cellular creatures). This aggregation provides reproductive fitness by enforcing a certain level of cooperation among the aggregated genes (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation). But this is not the fundamental mechanism of evolution, and every now an then a gene "defects" and does what is best for it at the time. Cancer is an example of this.
skywhopper 9y ago
I will just echo the other posts here that the author of this article or his sources severely misunderstand natural selection and the special case of sexual selection. The most important thing to understand about evolution is that natural selection can only work with the existing traits of an organism, the current environment in which the organism exists, and what random changes happen. Furthermore, every change in the phenotype of an organism has a number of sometimes disparate impacts on its likelihood of reproductive success within its own environment. Given all of that, we should _expect_ to see seeming contradictions like this example. Most birds can fly because their parents could fly. The genes for flying stick around because so many other traits of birds have evolved to benefit or rely on the ability to fly. But that doesn't mean flying itself is some magical end goal. Flying is only useful for natural selection insasmuch as it grants the organism a better likelihood of reproducing. Why would natural selection necessarily prefer birds that are ideally designed for flying in what we perceive as a graceful manner? In fact, we know that it doesn't. Ostriches, emus, and penguins can't fly, though their ancestors were able to. That is not evidence that they are evolutionary dead ends. The huge variety of penguin species that have evolved since the ancestor of penguins lost the ability to fly proves the opposite, in fact. This bird clearly flies well enough to continue to survive. If the traits that work against it flying gracefully grant it more reproductive success than flying slightly better would, then natural selection will favor those traits. Natural selection is often treated far too preciously. Sure, it took a genius in Darwin to identify and clearly describe the phenomenon, but the process itself is tautological. It comes down to, "the things that reproduce better reproduce better". This bird exists, therefore natural selection favored its traits. If we don't understand why, the failure is ours, not natural selection.
- lapsock 9y ago
  > the author of this article or his sources severely misunderstand natural selection and the special case of sexual selection. The author of this article is an Evolutionary Biology researcher at Yale. It would be really weird if he severely misunderstood natural selection.
  - dekhn 9y ago
antiquark 9y ago
Bad article. >The clumsy wings of males could be rationalized as a handicap that provides information about the birds’ condition or genetic quality. Also known as an honest indicator of fitness. >But the observation that female club-wings have also probably made themselves less capable fliers can only be described as decadent — Why the "probably" there? Previously the author mentioned that the bones where hollow in the females, unlike the males. Maybe they can fly just fine! >sexual selection leading to a decline in the capacity for survival. Yeah but, the fact that they exist, shows that they have survived.
sewercake 9y ago
reminded me of a much more interesting article I read a few years ago on the same subject: https://www.edge.org/conversation/richard_prum-duck-sex-aesthetic-evolution-and-the-origin-of-beauty https://www.edge.org/conversation/richard_prum-duck-sex-aest...
- dekhn 9y ago
  Thanks, just read that. I agree it's far more interesting. It's also more nuanced, and gives a better idea of the nature of the debate.
- zethraeus 9y ago
  A conversation with the author of this piece.
  - emmelaich 9y ago
    Which makes the article even more perplexing.
shaq_hammer 9y ago
The title reminds me of a species we're all familiar with where the females are adopting increasingly high standards for mates based in obsolete evolutionary preferences which have no applicability to fitness in the current environment, and where the skills relevant to survival in the current environment are ironically often seen as unattractive by the females, and males who cultivate these skills often don't have the time to develop the portions of the aforementioned obsolete traits that are trainable.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  What obsolete traits are you talking about?
  - shaq_hammer 9y ago
    Mainly muscle mass and height.
    - watwut 9y ago
      Somehow I see plenty of short guys with little atleticism dating girls.
      - shaq_hammer 9y ago
        I can't say I ever do. This comes from living on a college campus for years and leaving without having been able to get a single date.
        nerdponx 9y ago
        I once thought this was my problem. Turns out it had nothing to do with anything, and I was just an unlikable weirdo. Sorry if that doesn't help. But blaming women for not liking you doesn't help either.
        shaq_hammer 9y ago
fangSchweeeee 9y ago
Oh, boo! Boo to this thing! It is an affront to my sensibilities, and would seek to tell me I am wrong to find attraction where I expect it to be! Boo, that anyone would tell me my love is wrong! Boo, to the very idea that my love at first sight is unfit to survive the slings and arrows of this cruel universe! Boo, to the slightest belief that my handsome and wonderful instincts would lead me astray! Boo, to this! Boo, I say!
erikb 9y ago
I'd guess that this kind of article must gain a lot of upvotes in a hacker forum.
lkrubner 9y ago
The title suggests "Fisherian runaway" but the article does not. Since the 1930s, it's been well known that in some cases sexual selection will undermine natural selection. Very simply, if a male is liked by most females, then a female has an incentive to mate with that male, even if the female does not like that male, because then her male children will have a trait that most females like. This can lead to a feedback loop that then goes to far, with maladaptive consequences. This is a well studied case: ------------------- Fisherian runaway or runaway selection is a sexual selection mechanism proposed by the mathematical biologist Ronald Fisher in the early 20th century, to account for the evolution of exaggerated male ornamentation by persistent, directional female choice. An example is the colourful and elaborate peacock plumage compared to the relatively subdued peahen plumage; the costly ornaments, notably the bird's extremely long tail, appear to be incompatible with natural selection. Fisherian runaway can be postulated to include sexually dimorphic phenotypic traits such as behaviour expressed by either sex. Extreme and apparently maladaptive sexual dimorphism represented a paradox for evolutionary biologists from Charles Darwin's time up to the modern evolutionary synthesis. Darwin attempted to resolve the paradox by assuming genetic bases for both the preference and the ornament, and supposed an "aesthetic sense" in higher animals, leading to powerful selection of both characteristics in subsequent generations. Fisher developed the theory further by assuming genetic correlation between the preference and the ornament, that initially the ornament signalled greater potential fitness (the likelihood of leaving more descendants), so preference for the ornament had a selective advantage. Subsequently, if strong enough, female preference for exaggerated ornamentation in mate selection could be enough to undermine natural selection even when the ornament has become non-adaptive.[3] Over subsequent generations this could lead to runaway selection by positive feedback, and the speed with which the trait and the preference increase could (until counter-selection interferes) increase exponentially ("geometrically"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway
zethraeus 9y ago
Sexual selection seems like a really interesting case of natural selection having the property of both creating and filling an evolutionary niche. Through that lens, there's no counterintuitive behavior here, and natural selection isn't being undermined. It's an emergent polarization.
jdpigeon 9y ago
It's interesting to consider this article in light of the fact that the most ubiquitous and successful bird species are all drab and without much sexual dimorphism (crows, sparrows, gulls)
kevinalexbrown 9y ago
I remember once from undergrad the saying '"obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.' Seeing how something could be true is dramatically different from identifying and defending that it is true. It's dangerously easy to say "oh yea, makes sense, natural selection happens by mating so if mates choose club wings, I get it. Obvious." But Prum's trying to go a step further, and test just how far out of balance and arbitrary the mate selection part can be from the direct do-not-die part of evolutionary fitness. He proposes that we can differentiate between these two by considering that the club wings aren't actually indicators of higher direct fitness, because they hurt the ability to fly, even among females that have no need for such shenanagins. I'm not sure I totally agree with or grasp that, but at least it's an attempt to further understand and test the idea. I'm frankly surprised by comments accusing a well established evolutionary biologist of severely misunderstanding natural selection. The author has spent his career, among other things, investigating mechanisms of evolution, and identifying and performing tests to assess their relative importance to a particular species (here's an example: http://prumlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/prum_1997_phylogenetic_tests.pdf http://prumlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/prum_1997_phylog...). You might consider whether your objections are addressed in his work not aimed at the lay population, and that your criticism really just amounts to "He wrote this at not exactly the right level of sophistication for me." Maybe that's true, but it's a pretty boring claim.
- mbateman 9y ago
  I agree. I'm inclined to think the concepts are more subtle, not less. Some traits are shaped by sexual selection because of their deleterious effects. It's an honest signal: if you can survive despite having that crappy trait, you must be really robust! You can't conceptualize that as a fitness hit, because of what fitness means in the context of evolutionary biology. But you had better be able to conceptualize it somehow, because it's interesting and important if true.
- panzer_wyrm 9y ago
  Yeah but his whole thesis in thus article is based on the assumption that efficient flight is important for the survival of this species. If we said 40 millions years ago - protowhales cannot run as fast because their mates really like the membranes between their legs this would still be technically true.
avodonosov 9y ago
If they fly worse, does it mean their capacity for survival declines?
solidsnack9000 9y ago
There are some things that seem odd about this author's terminology. > ...the evolutionary mechanism behind this novelty is not adaptation by natural selection, in which only those who survive pass on their genes, allowing the species to become better adapted to its environment over time. Rather, it is sexual selection by mate choice... In natural selection, it is only individuals which mate which pass on their genes -- surviving is no good if you don't mate! It is my understanding that sexual selection has been classed as a variety of natural selection. If the species sexually selects itself to a point of maladaption, it goes extinct -- just as if it was maladapted to its environment for any other reason. Notably, these birds are not there: they still seem to be okay. > In the absence of direct costs to the choosers, the population will not be saved by natural selection. Because the cost is deferred, the whole population can ease further and further into maladaptive dysfunction, generation by generation. This seems to be treating natural selection as a game of one round, or describing a situation where there is almost no capacity for variation in the species. But if it's really true, that the species is in a kind of dead-end, where the most successful mates are the most maladapted, and there is little capacity in the genome to remedy this situation -- as the females could develop a different standard of attraction, or the males some other method of attraction -- then the effect of natural selection would be to extinguish the species. This is, in some sense, how "progress" is made in natural selection -- as much by elimination as anything else. This leads us to: > Instead of ensuring that organisms are on an inexorable path to self-improvement, mate choice can drive a species into what I call maladaptive decadence... It has been said by many more well informed than I am, that there is something specious about an "inexorable path to self-improvement" with regards to animals. Animals become more adapted to their environment; but they don't become "better animals" since a change in the environment leads them to be worse adapted. The subtlety is that, traits may be gained, and then lost, and both were "better": to gain fur as the earth cooled, and to lose it again as the earth warmed. And finally I must ask, where has the author shown the birds are maladapted? They fly awkwardly, sure -- but what difference does it make for them?
mudil 9y ago
Interesting findings, but really nothing here new about the evolutionary biology. This is just another example of Zahavian adaptations, aka handicap principle, "which explains the evolution of characteristics, behaviors or structures that appear contrary to the principles of Darwinian evolution in that they appear to reduce fitness and endanger individual organisms. Evolved by sexual selection, these act as signals of the status of the organism, functioning to e. g. attract mates." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amotz_Zahavi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amotz_Zahavi
denois 9y ago
I see something in common between those birds and the modern western females. We will see soon how well nice look can compete with artificial intelligence for survival.
c3534l 9y ago
> It may even lead to extinction. So natural selection.
panzer_wyrm 9y ago
The human females find sense of humor attractive. That requires development of big brain. Think how shitty big brain is - it soaks up nutrition, takes insane amounts of protein to develop, makes the infant helpless for 12 years, diverts resources from muscle mass and bone, makes easier death during childbirth and permanently diminishes the ability of the mother to gather food. This species is doomed by the chasing of this superficial attractiveness.
- make3 9y ago
  I can't tell if this comment is being serious about not seeing the other advantages of the bigger brain for the survival of the specie.
  - panzer_wyrm 9y ago
    Take a wild guess. Especially in context of the article which says how badly it fucks the wings without giving any information how the species interacts with their wider ecosystem.
- flamedoge 9y ago
  well we're the first to defy Darwinism despite of having all those negative traits.
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Jean-Philipe 9y ago
Can't believe Idiocracy hasn't been brought up by anyone yet, a SciFi satire about exactly this phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
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121 points by sparaker 9y ago

> But the evolutionary mechanism behind this novelty is not adaptation by natural selection, in which only those who survive pass on their genes, allowing the species to become better adapted to its environment over time. Rather, it is sexual selection by mate choice, in which individuals pass on their genes only if they’re chosen as mates. TFA has a weird definition for natural selection. Evolution has no preferences and sexual selection is natural selection.

foglerek 9y ago
Agreed. This is more akin to evolution being stuck in a suboptimal (and perhaps a dead-end) local minima - but it is still natural selection as more pleasing features = survival on an individual scale.
- pharrlax 9y ago
  Small aside: local minimum. Minima is plural (like datum/data).
- ggggtez 9y ago
  Complex systems can spend a long time following gradient descent without reaching the local optimal. For all we know, it's features have other advantages, like scaring off predators. Traits need to be considered with the ones they compete against. It's impossible to judge the bird in isolation.
azakai 9y ago
> sexual selection is natural selection It's a matter of definition, I think. Darwin made a distinction between natural selection and sexual selection, > Sexual selection was first proposed by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species (1859) and developed in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), as he felt that natural selection alone was unable to account for certain types of non-survival adaptations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection So the distinction the article here makes is a reasonable one with a long history. But more recently, the terms are often defined as non-distinct, > Factors that affect reproductive success are also important, including sexual selection (now often included in natural selection) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
- posterboy 9y ago
  two sides of one coin, init? Edit: I mean, sexual selection is the pinhole of reproductive success, whereas other selective mechanisms are mediated by death, which is quite the opposite.
devnull255 9y ago
Evolution happens because of natural selection. It is the narrative of natural selection and does not always have a happy ending. The subtitle of the article is just plain wrong. Of course natural selection explains "the too sexy birds", it just can't predict how long the evolutionary span will be.

lisper 9y ago

The puzzlement over the apparent reproductive disadvantages of wing-singing is simply a reflection of a misunderstanding of how evolution works. Evolution does not select for the reproductive fitness of species, it selects for the reproductive fitness of genes. And it does not select for the absolute fitness of genes, but rather for their fitness relative to competing alleles with respect to a particular environment. The genes for wing-singing are better at reproducing themselves in an environment where manakins already exist than the genes for alternative strategies for finding mates. That this might hurt the reproductive fitness of the other genes that go into making club-wing manakins matters not at all to the wing-singing genes. Genes don't think these things through. Genes don't think at all. Some genes build things that think, and some of those things that think end up being puzzled by the behavior of genes, including the very genes that built them.

dekhn 9y ago
You're describing this viewpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio... however I don't think it's really an accepted (in terms of evidence) theory that explains all evolution. I think most biologists think that evolution selects at multiple levels (although likely the underlying processes are much more complex than just that). After all, no real visible phenotype is truly based on a single gene, but rather the dynamic interplay of hundreds of gene products over the course of the organism's development.
- lisper 9y ago
  > You're describing this viewpoint Yes. > evolution selects at multiple levels That's just another way of saying that evolution selects for reproductive fitness with respect to a particular environment. If a gene is part of an organism, then the other genes in that organism are part of that gene's environment. The aggregation of genes into organisms is itself an evolutionary adaptation (as is the aggregation of organisms into more complex organisms like eukaryotic cells and multi-cellular creatures). This aggregation provides reproductive fitness by enforcing a certain level of cooperation among the aggregated genes (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation). But this is not the fundamental mechanism of evolution, and every now an then a gene "defects" and does what is best for it at the time. Cancer is an example of this.

skywhopper 9y ago

I will just echo the other posts here that the author of this article or his sources severely misunderstand natural selection and the special case of sexual selection. The most important thing to understand about evolution is that natural selection can only work with the existing traits of an organism, the current environment in which the organism exists, and what random changes happen. Furthermore, every change in the phenotype of an organism has a number of sometimes disparate impacts on its likelihood of reproductive success within its own environment. Given all of that, we should _expect_ to see seeming contradictions like this example. Most birds can fly because their parents could fly. The genes for flying stick around because so many other traits of birds have evolved to benefit or rely on the ability to fly. But that doesn't mean flying itself is some magical end goal. Flying is only useful for natural selection insasmuch as it grants the organism a better likelihood of reproducing. Why would natural selection necessarily prefer birds that are ideally designed for flying in what we perceive as a graceful manner? In fact, we know that it doesn't. Ostriches, emus, and penguins can't fly, though their ancestors were able to. That is not evidence that they are evolutionary dead ends. The huge variety of penguin species that have evolved since the ancestor of penguins lost the ability to fly proves the opposite, in fact. This bird clearly flies well enough to continue to survive. If the traits that work against it flying gracefully grant it more reproductive success than flying slightly better would, then natural selection will favor those traits. Natural selection is often treated far too preciously. Sure, it took a genius in Darwin to identify and clearly describe the phenomenon, but the process itself is tautological. It comes down to, "the things that reproduce better reproduce better". This bird exists, therefore natural selection favored its traits. If we don't understand why, the failure is ours, not natural selection.

lapsock 9y ago
> the author of this article or his sources severely misunderstand natural selection and the special case of sexual selection. The author of this article is an Evolutionary Biology researcher at Yale. It would be really weird if he severely misunderstood natural selection.
- dekhn 9y ago

antiquark 9y ago

Bad article. >The clumsy wings of males could be rationalized as a handicap that provides information about the birds’ condition or genetic quality. Also known as an honest indicator of fitness. >But the observation that female club-wings have also probably made themselves less capable fliers can only be described as decadent — Why the "probably" there? Previously the author mentioned that the bones where hollow in the females, unlike the males. Maybe they can fly just fine! >sexual selection leading to a decline in the capacity for survival. Yeah but, the fact that they exist, shows that they have survived.

sewercake 9y ago

reminded me of a much more interesting article I read a few years ago on the same subject: https://www.edge.org/conversation/richard_prum-duck-sex-aesthetic-evolution-and-the-origin-of-beauty https://www.edge.org/conversation/richard_prum-duck-sex-aest...

dekhn 9y ago
Thanks, just read that. I agree it's far more interesting. It's also more nuanced, and gives a better idea of the nature of the debate.
zethraeus 9y ago
A conversation with the author of this piece.
- emmelaich 9y ago
  Which makes the article even more perplexing.

shaq_hammer 9y ago

The title reminds me of a species we're all familiar with where the females are adopting increasingly high standards for mates based in obsolete evolutionary preferences which have no applicability to fitness in the current environment, and where the skills relevant to survival in the current environment are ironically often seen as unattractive by the females, and males who cultivate these skills often don't have the time to develop the portions of the aforementioned obsolete traits that are trainable.

nerdponx 9y ago
What obsolete traits are you talking about?
- shaq_hammer 9y ago
  Mainly muscle mass and height.
  - watwut 9y ago
    Somehow I see plenty of short guys with little atleticism dating girls.
    - shaq_hammer 9y ago
      I can't say I ever do. This comes from living on a college campus for years and leaving without having been able to get a single date.
      - nerdponx 9y ago
        I once thought this was my problem. Turns out it had nothing to do with anything, and I was just an unlikable weirdo. Sorry if that doesn't help. But blaming women for not liking you doesn't help either.
        shaq_hammer 9y ago

fangSchweeeee 9y ago

Oh, boo! Boo to this thing! It is an affront to my sensibilities, and would seek to tell me I am wrong to find attraction where I expect it to be! Boo, that anyone would tell me my love is wrong! Boo, to the very idea that my love at first sight is unfit to survive the slings and arrows of this cruel universe! Boo, to the slightest belief that my handsome and wonderful instincts would lead me astray! Boo, to this! Boo, I say!

erikb 9y ago

I'd guess that this kind of article must gain a lot of upvotes in a hacker forum.

lkrubner 9y ago

The title suggests "Fisherian runaway" but the article does not. Since the 1930s, it's been well known that in some cases sexual selection will undermine natural selection. Very simply, if a male is liked by most females, then a female has an incentive to mate with that male, even if the female does not like that male, because then her male children will have a trait that most females like. This can lead to a feedback loop that then goes to far, with maladaptive consequences. This is a well studied case: ------------------- Fisherian runaway or runaway selection is a sexual selection mechanism proposed by the mathematical biologist Ronald Fisher in the early 20th century, to account for the evolution of exaggerated male ornamentation by persistent, directional female choice. An example is the colourful and elaborate peacock plumage compared to the relatively subdued peahen plumage; the costly ornaments, notably the bird's extremely long tail, appear to be incompatible with natural selection. Fisherian runaway can be postulated to include sexually dimorphic phenotypic traits such as behaviour expressed by either sex. Extreme and apparently maladaptive sexual dimorphism represented a paradox for evolutionary biologists from Charles Darwin's time up to the modern evolutionary synthesis. Darwin attempted to resolve the paradox by assuming genetic bases for both the preference and the ornament, and supposed an "aesthetic sense" in higher animals, leading to powerful selection of both characteristics in subsequent generations. Fisher developed the theory further by assuming genetic correlation between the preference and the ornament, that initially the ornament signalled greater potential fitness (the likelihood of leaving more descendants), so preference for the ornament had a selective advantage. Subsequently, if strong enough, female preference for exaggerated ornamentation in mate selection could be enough to undermine natural selection even when the ornament has become non-adaptive.[3] Over subsequent generations this could lead to runaway selection by positive feedback, and the speed with which the trait and the preference increase could (until counter-selection interferes) increase exponentially ("geometrically"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway

zethraeus 9y ago

Sexual selection seems like a really interesting case of natural selection having the property of both creating and filling an evolutionary niche. Through that lens, there's no counterintuitive behavior here, and natural selection isn't being undermined. It's an emergent polarization.

jdpigeon 9y ago

It's interesting to consider this article in light of the fact that the most ubiquitous and successful bird species are all drab and without much sexual dimorphism (crows, sparrows, gulls)

kevinalexbrown 9y ago

I remember once from undergrad the saying '"obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.' Seeing how something could be true is dramatically different from identifying and defending that it is true. It's dangerously easy to say "oh yea, makes sense, natural selection happens by mating so if mates choose club wings, I get it. Obvious." But Prum's trying to go a step further, and test just how far out of balance and arbitrary the mate selection part can be from the direct do-not-die part of evolutionary fitness. He proposes that we can differentiate between these two by considering that the club wings aren't actually indicators of higher direct fitness, because they hurt the ability to fly, even among females that have no need for such shenanagins. I'm not sure I totally agree with or grasp that, but at least it's an attempt to further understand and test the idea. I'm frankly surprised by comments accusing a well established evolutionary biologist of severely misunderstanding natural selection. The author has spent his career, among other things, investigating mechanisms of evolution, and identifying and performing tests to assess their relative importance to a particular species (here's an example: http://prumlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/prum_1997_phylogenetic_tests.pdf http://prumlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/prum_1997_phylog...). You might consider whether your objections are addressed in his work not aimed at the lay population, and that your criticism really just amounts to "He wrote this at not exactly the right level of sophistication for me." Maybe that's true, but it's a pretty boring claim.

mbateman 9y ago
I agree. I'm inclined to think the concepts are more subtle, not less. Some traits are shaped by sexual selection because of their deleterious effects. It's an honest signal: if you can survive despite having that crappy trait, you must be really robust! You can't conceptualize that as a fitness hit, because of what fitness means in the context of evolutionary biology. But you had better be able to conceptualize it somehow, because it's interesting and important if true.
panzer_wyrm 9y ago
Yeah but his whole thesis in thus article is based on the assumption that efficient flight is important for the survival of this species. If we said 40 millions years ago - protowhales cannot run as fast because their mates really like the membranes between their legs this would still be technically true.

avodonosov 9y ago

If they fly worse, does it mean their capacity for survival declines?

solidsnack9000 9y ago

There are some things that seem odd about this author's terminology. > ...the evolutionary mechanism behind this novelty is not adaptation by natural selection, in which only those who survive pass on their genes, allowing the species to become better adapted to its environment over time. Rather, it is sexual selection by mate choice... In natural selection, it is only individuals which mate which pass on their genes -- surviving is no good if you don't mate! It is my understanding that sexual selection has been classed as a variety of natural selection. If the species sexually selects itself to a point of maladaption, it goes extinct -- just as if it was maladapted to its environment for any other reason. Notably, these birds are not there: they still seem to be okay. > In the absence of direct costs to the choosers, the population will not be saved by natural selection. Because the cost is deferred, the whole population can ease further and further into maladaptive dysfunction, generation by generation. This seems to be treating natural selection as a game of one round, or describing a situation where there is almost no capacity for variation in the species. But if it's really true, that the species is in a kind of dead-end, where the most successful mates are the most maladapted, and there is little capacity in the genome to remedy this situation -- as the females could develop a different standard of attraction, or the males some other method of attraction -- then the effect of natural selection would be to extinguish the species. This is, in some sense, how "progress" is made in natural selection -- as much by elimination as anything else. This leads us to: > Instead of ensuring that organisms are on an inexorable path to self-improvement, mate choice can drive a species into what I call maladaptive decadence... It has been said by many more well informed than I am, that there is something specious about an "inexorable path to self-improvement" with regards to animals. Animals become more adapted to their environment; but they don't become "better animals" since a change in the environment leads them to be worse adapted. The subtlety is that, traits may be gained, and then lost, and both were "better": to gain fur as the earth cooled, and to lose it again as the earth warmed. And finally I must ask, where has the author shown the birds are maladapted? They fly awkwardly, sure -- but what difference does it make for them?

mudil 9y ago

Interesting findings, but really nothing here new about the evolutionary biology. This is just another example of Zahavian adaptations, aka handicap principle, "which explains the evolution of characteristics, behaviors or structures that appear contrary to the principles of Darwinian evolution in that they appear to reduce fitness and endanger individual organisms. Evolved by sexual selection, these act as signals of the status of the organism, functioning to e. g. attract mates." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amotz_Zahavi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amotz_Zahavi

denois 9y ago

I see something in common between those birds and the modern western females. We will see soon how well nice look can compete with artificial intelligence for survival.

c3534l 9y ago

> It may even lead to extinction. So natural selection.

panzer_wyrm 9y ago

The human females find sense of humor attractive. That requires development of big brain. Think how shitty big brain is - it soaks up nutrition, takes insane amounts of protein to develop, makes the infant helpless for 12 years, diverts resources from muscle mass and bone, makes easier death during childbirth and permanently diminishes the ability of the mother to gather food. This species is doomed by the chasing of this superficial attractiveness.

make3 9y ago
I can't tell if this comment is being serious about not seeing the other advantages of the bigger brain for the survival of the specie.
- panzer_wyrm 9y ago
  Take a wild guess. Especially in context of the article which says how badly it fucks the wings without giving any information how the species interacts with their wider ecosystem.
flamedoge 9y ago
well we're the first to defy Darwinism despite of having all those negative traits.

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Jean-Philipe 9y ago

Can't believe Idiocracy hasn't been brought up by anyone yet, a SciFi satire about exactly this phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

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