Handicap principle implies emergence of dimorphic ornaments

Species spanning the animal kingdom have evolved extravagant and costly ornaments to attract mating partners. Zahavi's handicap principle offers an elegant explanation for this: ornaments signal individual quality, and must be costly to ensure honest signalling, making mate selection more effic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Vol. 283; no. 1843; pp. 1 - 6
Main Authors Clifton, Sara M., Braun, Rosemary I., Abrams, Daniel M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published THE ROYAL SOCIETY 30.11.2016
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Summary:Species spanning the animal kingdom have evolved extravagant and costly ornaments to attract mating partners. Zahavi's handicap principle offers an elegant explanation for this: ornaments signal individual quality, and must be costly to ensure honest signalling, making mate selection more efficient. Here, we incorporate the assumptions of the handicap principle into a mathematical model and show that they are sufficient to explain the heretofore puzzling observation of bimodally distributed ornament sizes in a variety of species.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954