I am currently studying the Stickleback Fish which has a tendency to do a mating ritual. One of the steps requires the fish to dance in front of his partner (zig-zag back and forth). Sexual selection implies “By providing more chances to mate, it ensures that genes related to skillful execution of the dance are more represented in the next generation” (Russem et. al 2023).
If this has been occurring for multiple generations, how is it, not a normal standard, wouldn’t this part of the process of selection be redundant? Is their proof that it has changed over time for other animals?
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Couple things:
1. In some cases, the bar is always rising and what was good enough several generations ago is now a bottom of the barrel pick. If you’ve ever seen those comparison videos of early Olympic gymnastics routines that took gold vs the routines necessary now to take home the gold… it can be a bit like that.
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2. Animals unable to meet those standards are still born. Sexual selection is only part of what causes gene variance. One pair can mate several times over and their offspring will still have gene variance. The specific genes passed on are randomized and there’s always the chance of gene mutation. Choosing the best mate is an attempt to have successful offspring, but the chance those offspring will be lacking desired traits is still present.
Just because your father was really good at dancing, doesn’t mean you will be too… and to make things worse, someone else comes along with a gene mutation that makes them even better at dancing than your father was!
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