Sexual Selection: Testing the Alternatives (Life Sciences Research Report, 39)

By J.W. Bradbury

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471916242
• ISBN13: 9780471916246
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 2.2"