After developing their model, the researchers studied 23 data sets from 15 different animal species from the published scientific literature and found that all were consistent with their model. There were no exceptions.
"The model is completely independent of the underlying genetic mechanism that causes these ornaments to grow, which I find fascinating," Braun said. "It tells us that if you have these two competing forces, natural selection and sexual selection, two morphs, or subgroups, will emerge. The model is so general it can be applied to many different species and still have the same explanatory power.""
The persistence of pea foul in Southeast Asia has always seemed too much to be signally explained away by sexual selection. I mean, look at the hungry predators ranging from the civit cat to the tiger that range in the same forests that have been home to the Myanmar Peacock and more recently domestic pea foul. I mean, there are 9 species of cat alone. Bears, snakes really big and fast snakes, alligators, other birds and monkeys are all in the neighborhood. Many of them kill people, so what is a fancy and multiply handicapped but likely tasty bird doing there.
I understand the argument that "by surviving his many handicaps, he shows the female his worthy biology." That's the same one used for antlered beasts that survive the handicap of carrying something that gets caught in the brush and in the horns of the competition. However when you look at the male peacock waddle around open to the attack of any halfway bright cat it seems possible that human intervention had to of occurred. Except, people have only protected then in relatively recent times, certainly not long enough to account for the several species in Asia and Africa.
gays spend a lot on costly clothes/hair/makeup in order to attract the opposite sex. But it pays off handsomely in attracting partners which of course leads to more offspring. I’ll make a computer model. Can i have a grant?
Awesome discovery, based on a host of flawed foundations.
Universities need to teach common sense.
As it happens... flashy tail feathers fall out with relative ease, much easier than feathers on the rest of a bird, leaving predators with unpalatable feathers instead of meat.
About 50 years ago I met a very bright man who pointed out that whenever any type of animal evolves a very distinctive feature it has something to do with “either eating or copulating.”
Ladies love outlaws.
Darwin did it. No need for further investigation, the evolutionary fitness of foul peas notwithstanding.
Animals have ornaments because God is an artist.
Wow! A mathematical model that “proves” Darwinism? What will they think of next? A mathematical model that “proves” anthropocentric global warming if atmospheric CO2 increases?
Do they have a model yet that “proves” that the laptop PC and Internet will evolve from crushed up Windows OS CDs and crushed up PC and router parts mixed with seawater and blasted with lightening for hundreds of millions of years?
For the peacock, there is an evolutionary explanation. The male plays no role in raising the chicks. He is only there to supply sperm. As such, the flock only needs one exceptional male.
To have survived with such an ungainly tail, he had to be exceptionally strong, fast, and disease-resistant. Those genes will be passed along to his daughter chicks. The pea hen is looking for the male who will give her the most-fit daughters.
And then we have The Mummers.