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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Sexual selection still works, because no animal or plant is immortal: they/we all still depend on finding mates who’ll say “yes.” For millions of years, lifespans have been measured in years or decades — meaning that the species goes on for millions of years only if mortal short-lived individuals still have sex every few years or decades, and they generally exercise some agency in doing so, thus affecting what the species looks like in the next round and next thousand rounds.
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