Meeting Abstract

27.2  Friday, Jan. 4  Sexual selection and functional morphology: A new frontier? IRSCHICK, Duncan J; University of Massachusetts at Amherst irschick@bio.umass.edu

Sexual selection has been studied for many decades, yet many of its central theories remain unresolved, in large part because of the difficulty of resolving issues of male quality and female choice. An emerging paradigm examines sexual traits from a functional perspective. This approach is multifaceted. One aspect concerns whether the size, shape and color of sexual signals is an honest indicator of underlying functional traits that dictate the outcome of male fights and female mating choices. An already large and rapidly accumulating body of data shows strong support for the role of male competition in driving the evolution of sexual traits in relation to function. Far less support is afforded for female choice, as in many of the systems studied to date (primarily lizards), support for female choice itself is ambiguous. Mark-recapture studies are increasingly being used to understand the dual role of sexual and natural selection on functional traits, and in some cases these dual forces seem to operating in the same direction. There is a desperate need for a greater range of studies beyond squamate reptiles, however, so generalizations cannot yet be extended to other groups such as birds, amphibians, or invertebrates, among others.