Super interesting paper showing how #gelada #monkey mothers who are pregnant or with very young infants FAKE sexual swellings to kid a new harem male into mating. That might just stop the male from infanticidal killing.
Primate #female #deception GOOD! Gelada do well to manage the big risk of #primate #infanticide -- a huge cost for primate mothers.
#deceptivesexualsignals #sexualselection
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225014514?dgcid=author
Women rated the facial attractiveness and masculinity of photographs of 105 healthy and beardless men between 30 and 45 years old, and their ratings were positively correlated with age and testosterone, and negatively correlated with adiposity.
Summary: https://www.psypost.org/women-can-read-age-adiposity-and-testosterone-level-from-a-mans-face/
Original paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03205-3
New meta-analysis out on the role of sexual selection in speciation!
Across the Animal kingdom, we found that stronger sexual selection is significantly (though weakly) associated with greater species richness in comparative studies — suggesting a modest role for sexual selection in speciation.
A great collaboration with Tim Janicke, Jeanne Tonnabel, Tamra Mendelson & Mike Ritchie.
Operational sex ratio (Ecology 🏞️)
In the evolutionary biology of sexual reproduction, operational sex ratio is the ratio of sexually competing males that are ready to mate to sexually competing females that are ready to mate, or alternatively the local ratio of fertilizable females to sexually active males at any given time. This differs from physical ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_sex_ratio
#OperationalSexRatio #Ecology #SexRatio #Reproduction #MatingSystems #SexualSelection
Male intrasexual competition (Evolutionary biology 🧬)
In ethology, male-male intrasexual competition occurs when two males of the same species compete for the opportunity to mate with a female. Sexually dimorphic traits, size, sex ratio, and the social situation may all play a role in the effects male-male competition has on the reproductive success of a male and the...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_intrasexual_competition
#MaleIntrasexualCompetition #SexualSelection #EvolutionaryBiology
Till Selection Do Us Part? Testing Sexual Selection’s Role in Speciation
Summary & Analysis by Pooja Radhakrishnan of "Evolutionary lability of sexual selection and its implications for speciation and macroevolution" by Januario et al.
https://www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/April-2025-Januario.html
Female Grey #Phalarope in summer plumage at Loch of Spiggie, Shetland in early June.
Female phalaropes famed for their reverse #sexualselection, with larger, highly decorated #females fighting over #males, setting up numerous nests and leaving males to incubate and care for chicks! They're off for a spot of #polyandry!
Photos: Hugh Harrop, Shetland Wildlife
Ornamental traits play a central role in sexual selection. Gussone et al. identify sources of phenotypic variation in ornamental traits by showing that inbreeding and genetic relatedness of rivals affect the dynamic colour-expression in competing males in a cichlid fish.
Read now ahead of print!
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/736181
#sexualSelection #phenotype #inbreeding #genetic #fish #ornamentalTraits
Female ocellated wrasse perform cryptic mate selection by controlling sperm velocity, performing sexual selection after mating. However, warmer waters reduce the females' ability to control sperm velocity, reducing their ability to enforce mate preference.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.10.648287v1?rss=1
#Science #SexualSelection #ClimateChange #Evolution #Fish #Wrasse
Januario et al. found no correlation between sexual selection intensity & speciation rates or proxy traits. Because sexual selection intensity has high intraspecific variation and low phylogenetic signal, its macroevolutionary impacts are weak. Read now!
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/734457
#sexualSelection #speciation #intraspecificVariation #phylogenetics #macroevolution
Men think that women are attracted to more masculine faces than they actually are, and women think that men are attracted to more feminine faces than they actually are.
Original paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0310835
Sexual selection in mosquitofish favors males with better inhibitory control and better spatial learning abilities; other aspects of cognitive performance were not favored.
Abstract (not open access): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02645-3
Sexual selection on Valentines day
Adam Ray Smith talking at #UniversityIceland #fridaybiology #SexualSelection #evolution #darwin
How and why does #SexualSelection vary geographically? @ra_barber @ja_tobias &co study 10,671 #bird species, revealing that avian sexual selection varies latitudinally, is explained by temperature seasonality & other #climate-related factors #PLOSBiology https://plos.io/4fixxjC
Aren't mouthbrooders sexy? Rueger et al. find that sexual selection in the pajama cardinalfish, where fathers brood eggs in their mouth, changes with group size and composition. Both sexes can take advantage of extra-pair matings. Read now ahead of print!
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/731422
#mouthbrooders #sexualSelection #pajamaCardinalfish #eggs #cardinalfish
This is my #introduction post! Looking forward to helping build a fish science community on Mastodon by following and boosting. I work primarily on #cichlid #speciation and #sexualselection but also #salmon and #trout. I have another account in which I post random stuff about #Hull and #running (link in my bio).
How does sexual selection influence behavioural consistency? Using experimental evolution, Brand et al. demonstrate that evolution under heightened sexual selection limits individual phenotypic plasticity and promotes male behavioural consistency.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/729600
#sexualSelection #behavioral #evolution #phenotypicPlasticity #male
New paper on the measurement of #SexualSelection!
https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpad227
Sexual selection may favour combinations of traits before, during, and/or after copulation.
Here, we studied how selection builds up along consecutive episodes of selection by (i) assessing the ability of individual flatworms to mate, transfer sperm, and fertilize eggs; and (ii) measuring 13 phenotypic traits (including sperm production rate, the shape of male genitalia, and the morphology of sperm cells).
Genic capture (Evolutionary biology 🧬)
Genic capture is a hypothesis explaining the maintenance of genetic variance in traits under sexual selection. A classic problem in sexual selection is the fixation of alleles that are beneficial under strong selection, thereby eliminating the benefits of mate choice. Genic capture resolves this paradox by suggesting that additive genetic variance of sexua...
Engines of Our Ingenuity 2637: Neanderthal Genes
Episode: 2637 Neanderthal genes in the human genome, and Darwin’s theory of Sexual Selection. Today, Neanderthal genes.
#darwin #evolution #genetics #HomoSapiens #MaxPlanckInstituteForEvolutionaryAnthropology #Neanderthal #sexualSelection
