Careful or colorful: the evolution of animal ornaments
April 20, 2016
3:00 pm PHG 646
Abstract
Extravagant and costly ornaments (e.g., deer antlers or peacock feathers)
are found throughout the animal kingdom. Charles Darwin was the first to
suggest that female courtship preferences drive ornament development
through sexual selection. I this talk I will describe a minimal
mathematical model for ornament evolution which incorporates two key
components: an intrinsic cost of ornamentation to an individual, and a
social benefit of relatively large ornaments within a population. Using
bifurcation analysis and perturbation theory, I will show that an animal
population should split into two niches, one with large ornaments and one
with small — a phenomenon observed in many species.
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Last modified: April 11 2016 - 18:14:43