Aesthetic evolution by mate choice: Darwin'sreallydangerous idea

Abstract

Darwin proposed an explicitly aesthetic theory of sexual selection in which he described mate preferences as a ‘taste for the beautiful’, an ‘aesthetic capacity’, etc. These statements were not merely colourful Victorian mannerisms, but explicit expressions of Darwin's hypothesis that mate preferences can evolve for arbitrarily attractive traits that do not provide any additional benefits to mate choice. In his critique of Darwin, A. R. Wallace proposed an entirely modern mechanism of mate preference evolution through the correlation of display traits with male vigour or viability, but he called this mechanism natural selection. Wallace's honest advertisement proposal was stridently anti-Darwinian and anti-aesthetic. Most modern sexual selection research relies on essentially the same Neo-Wallacean theory renamed as sexual selection. I define the process of aesthetic evolution as the evolution of a communication signal through sensory/cognitive evaluation, which is most elaborated through coevolution of the signal and its evaluation. Sensory evaluation includes the possibility that display traits do not encode information that is being assessed, but are merely preferred. A genuinely Darwinian, aesthetic theory of sexual selection requires the incorporation of the Lande–Kirkpatrick null model into sexual selection research, but also encompasses the possibility of sensory bias, good genes and direct benefits mechanisms.

Full Issue

“…Females might base their choice on an integrated aesthetic value of the display, a value to which coordination of limbs and control of body posture contribute substantially. In this sense, we agree with other authors (Prum 2012) that elaborate courtship displays might have evolved via Fisherian sexual selection on females' intrinsic aesthetic value that the analysis of each separate component will inevitably fail to discover.…”

Physiological control of elaborate male courtship: Female choice for neuromuscular systems

“…Note that the hypothesis that the courtship has an aesthetic value does not necessarily exclude that some of the sexually selected traits indicate genetic quality; in this respect we agree with other authors that elaborate displays may be the results of a combination of evolutionary mechanisms that may or may not provide genetic benefits to the chooser (e.g. see Prum, 2012). …”

Limnephilid taxa revised by speciation traits: Rhadicoleptus, Isogamus, Melampophylax genera, Chaetopteryx rugulosa, Psilopteryx psorosa species groups, Drusus bolivari, Annitella kosciuszkii species complexes (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae)

“…Secondary sexual traits can evolve without the input of natural selection. Darwin's really dangerous idea is that natural selection fails to explain the evolution of all forms and design (Prum 2012). Selectionist paradigm was also debated by the proposal of neutral theory (Kimura & Crow 1964, Nei 2005, demonstrating that genetic variation is maintained mostly by neutral processes.…”