May 2007
One of the key areas of evolutionary biology that is crying out for experimental data is sexual selection. This magazine article describes a recent article in Current Biology, which sheds new light on the “lek paradox”. Do male sexual traits (eg peacock “tails”) directly confer a genetic advantage or not? How can they if they are subject to strong sexual selection? In which case, why do females continue to discriminate when they get no genetic benefit?
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