9317391 Endler Secondary sexual traits are common in animals, and male traits are sometimes so strongly developed that they appear maladaptive. Numerous theoretical models of sexual selection attempt to account for the evolution of conspicuous sexual display traits through female choice. One property common to most models is that female preferences should determine the direction of evolution of male traits. However, most studies look only at the single-generation effects of female choice of males. Dr. Endler will examine the long-term effects of changes in female preferences. What factors cause sexually selected traits to evolve in particular directions?%%% One possible evolutionary bias is in the perception of traits by the sensory system; some traits are more easily perceived than others, and given that sensory systems are more sensitive to some aspects of signal than others, discrimination is easier for some aspects of signal than others. Dr Endler will examine the effects of sensory biases by means of an extensive artificial selection of female preferences and its secondary effects on male traits in Poecilia reticulata. These questions are not only interesting and important from the viewpoint of sexual selection, but also have important implications for the origin and maintenance of species because sexually selected traits are often used in species recognition and isolation.***
