The use of the epithet 'adaptive' in the popular denotation 'adaptive radiation' suggests that radiation as such does not imply adaptation. Without trying to define radiation more sharply than is usually done in textbooks, emphasis is given to what might be called non-adaptive radiation, a kind of diversification not accompanied by adaptation into various significantly different niches and, therefore, resulting in a group of allopatric species which are isolated because of competitive interactions.

Although the vast majority of higher animals are fixed for one chiral morph or another, the cause for this directionality is known in only a few cases. In snails, for example, rare individuals of the opposite coil are unable to mate with individuals of normal coil, so directionality is maintained by frequency-dependent selection. The snail subgenus Amphidromus presents an unexplained exception, because dextral (D) and sinistral (S) individuals occur sympatrically in roughly equal proportions (so-called ‘antisymmetry’) in most species. Here we show that in Amphidromus there is sexual selection for dimorphism, rather than selection for monomorphism. We found that matings between D and S individuals occur more frequently than expected by chance. Anatomical investigations showed that the chirality of the spermatophore and the female reproductive tract probably allow a greater fecundity in such inter-chiral matings. Computer simulation confirms that under these circumstances, sustained dimorphism is the expected outcome.