Animal Ornamentation
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
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
Clifton SM, Braun RI, Abrams DM (2018)
Next steps for modelling the evolution of ornamental signals.
Animal Behaviour 137.
Red deer