Aubree's Evolution Blog

 Male-Male Competition is when two males will fight one another for access to a female. There are 4 types of male-male competition that were discussed in the lectures.  Combat i s one type of male-male competition. This is when males will display aggression towards another male. The two males will fight for access to a female in order to mate with her. An example of this behavior is moose using their antlers to fight one another.  Another type of male-male competition is alternative mating strategies . Males can show different behaviors in order to gain access to females. An example of this can be seen in coho salmon. Some of these male are large and have aggressive fighting behavior. Other males are much smaller and mimic the females. Both of these behaviors are to help them gain mating access to females.  These strategies are similar because in both instances males use aggression against another male to gain mating access. They are different because the alternativ...

 One thing that I did not understand completely from the podcast was the difference between the types of  condition dependent indicator and the condition independent indicator .  It was said that the condition dependent indicator is when a female chooses a male that has survived to reproductive age so the male will pass those those traits that made him survive to the females young so her young will then be able to survive.  The condition independent indicator was said to be traits directly linked to a genetic benefit.  I am needing more information on the condition independent indicator because I am not sure how the female is able to pick out those traits.  One thing that I found to be new information to me and to also be interesting was "Sexy Sun Model" . This model states that there is no benefits to the traits that the females like, the females just like these traits for random reasons and this causes a feedback loop where more of the traits are in t...

  Three questions that I have about speciation are: 1. How long does it take for speciation to occur? Has there even been speciation that has been relatively fast? 2. Why are there so many concepts for what a species is? 3. Does everything have to fit into a species? This question is from the lecture video but I am curious about this question.