Blog Post: Eco-evolutionary dynamics of sexual selection: A trait-based perspective

In a recent post to Eco-Evo Evo-Eco I provide some background behind my recent Quarterly Review of Biology paper on the eco-evolutionary dynamics of sexual selection. But the blog does not just regurgitate the paper’s findings. Rather, with Andrew’s suggestion I’ve tried to relay the “story behind the paper”: why did I write this long paper, what did I learn along the way, and what are the hot areas for future work on the ecology and evolution of sexual selection?

Find the post here: http://ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2019/06/eco-evolutionary-dynamics-of-sexual.html

Figure 2 from the paper: Intrinsic Population Regulation Via Microevolutionary Change in Sexually Selected Male Aggression

The model is adapted from that initially presented in Krebs (1964, 1978). The outside ring depicts the evolutionary change in the proportion of the population with aggressive phenotypes. The inner ring depicts the concurrent change in population density that arises from and drives selection on aggressive phenotypes. “Eco-evo” indicates an evolutionary change arising from ecological change, in this case, the effect of population density on the proportion of the population composed of aggressive phenotypes. “Evo-eco” indicates an ecological change resulting from evolution in the population. Note that evolutionary and ecological cycles are offset indicating a lag effect of densitydependent selection on phenotypic evolution that perpetuates the eco-evolutionary cycle.