
When evolution's path leads to a dead end - laurex
https://massivesci.com/articles/evolving-toward-extinction/
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mannykannot
Extravagant display was a problem for Darwin, who realized it could make
individuals vulnerable to predation, until he realized that it actually
supported his theory, as it is the sort of thing that could arise where
selection matters, and harder to justify as the work of an omniscient creator.

Current theory often explains such displays as hard-to-fake signals of health
and general fitness, but I do not know if this idea originated with Darwin.

The size of male ostrocod genitalia is a different matter, as (I assume) it is
not about display, but about emphasizing reproduction at a possible cost to
the survival part of the strategy.

Dead-end strategies are not a threat to Darwinian evolution, as it only
optimizes for the short term, and are harder to justify as the work of an
intelligent creator.

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Y_Y
If intelligent design is your null hypothesis you're going to have a lot of
successful experiments.

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mannykannot
It was one for Darwin; another was Lamarckism. Once evolution began to be
accepted, it was often distorted by some ill-formed concept of a bias towards
progress, always epitomized by the human form. All these alternatives have
trouble explaining extravagant display.

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kyrieeschaton
Evolution just simply lacks a teleology, or, worse, implies a teleology so
divorced from any notion of progress that it's horrifying. Probably the most
genetically successful dog of all time is the one that "turned into" a cancer
and is now canine venereal transmissible tumor.

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solidsnack9000
_...those ostracod species where males invested heavily in sexual selection
chose poorly, it seems._

This is a kind of reversal of causality that is unfortunately is too common in
popular discussions of evolutionary biology.

Sexual selection of males is the result of female choice.

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dredmorbius
_How can we be sure of the ultimate effects of interacting drivers of
environmental change, competition, and resource pressures._

Thought: evolution is an attemp to solve the halting problem.

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TeMPOraL
So it spawned brains capable of conceptualizing the halting problem - and then
proving it unsolvable. Shouldn't the universe shut itself down now?

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dredmorbius
It's working on that. Entropy's a slow process.

Shannon was right.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=kt3csIz3hEk](https://youtube.com/watch?v=kt3csIz3hEk)

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quotemstr
The article argues that sexual dimorphism is an extinction risk. I don't buy
it: the ostrocod study doesn't generalize, and the rest of the author's links
are evolutionary anecdotes.

There are plenty of species in which sexual selection has been highly
adaptive, including our own: it's likely that sexual selection is what led to
runaway intelligence growth. We've been incredibly successful despite being
sexually dimorphic.

In fact, this article makes so little sense that I can't help but wonder
whether there's a culture war aspect to it. It's become fashionable to bash
masculinity.

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crpearce
Culture wars aside, the premise seems reasonable though, doesn't it?
Intraspecies reproductive fitness is orthogonal to species success and there
are clearly some examples (e.g. brightly colored plumage) where a trait that
improves individual reproductive success is a net negative for the species.

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hokumguru
Is it a net negative though? I would in fact wager the opposite. The tradeoff
must be beneficial else natural selection would have culled them from the
population.

I believe in this specific case, it is likely more difficult for males to
attract females than avoid predators.

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klmr
To start off, yes, the trait needs to provide a reproductive fitness benefit.
The problem is runaway sexual selection [1]. The textbook example of that
being the peacock plumage, which is subject to strong sexual selection, yet is
a detriment to overall fitness (see link for more details).

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway#Peacocks_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway#Peacocks_and_sexual_dimorphism)

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posterboy
Plumage is mimicri and so on.

The eye like patterns can scare and emulate size. The e tail does fiegn size
and does not fall into the general visual bird pattern.

