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Animal Ornamentation

PeacockSymbolism3.jpg

Peacock

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 signaling, making mate selection more efficient. 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, such as the horned dung beetle.

 

In collaboration with Daniel M. Abrams and Rosemary I. Braun

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Clifton SM, Braun RI, Abrams DM (2016)

Handicap principle implies emergence of dimorphic ornaments.

Proc. R. Soc. B 283 1843.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.1970

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Clifton SM, Braun RI, Abrams DM (2018)

Next steps for modelling the evolution of ornamental signals.

Animal Behaviour 137.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2018.01.017

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Red deer

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