title: Sexual and social competition: broadening perspectives by defining female roles.
abstract: Males figured more prominently than females in Darwin's view of sexual selection. He considered female choice of secondary importance to male-male competition as a mechanism to explain the evolution of male ornaments and armaments. Fisher later demonstrated the importance of female choice in driving male trait evolution, but his ideas were largely ignored for decades. As sexual selection came to embrace the notions of parent-offspring and sexual conflict, and experimental tests of female choice showed promise, females began to feature more prominently in the framework of sexual selection theory. Recent debate over this theory has centred around the role of females, not only over the question of choice, but also over female-female competition. Whereas some have called for expanding the sexual selection framework to encompass all forms of female-female competition, others have called for subsuming sexual selection within a broader framework of social selection, or replacing it altogether. Still others have argued for linking sexual selection more clearly to other evolutionary theories such as kin selection. Rather than simply debating terminology, we must take a broader view of the general processes that lead to trait evolution in both sexes by clearly defining the roles that females play in the process, and by focusing on intra- and inter-sexual interactions in males and females.
authors: Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, 10th Floor Schermerhorn Extension, 1200 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027, USA. dr2497@columbia.edu
authors: Dustin R
authors: DR
authors: Rubenstein
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003163:Competitive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005260:Female; D056084:Genetic Fitness / Q000502:physiology; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D052586:Mating Preference, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D012727:Sex Characteristics