Identical triggers drive extreme weapon evolution across wildly unrelated clades

Evidence

What these broad patterns reveal is a simple and surprisingly universal rule: after the final ingredient for arms races falls into place, entire clades of descendant species can all experience rapid evolution of extreme male weapons. Mastodons and flies could not be more different from each other. They lived at different times, in different habitats, and fed on different foods. One was more than 120 million times the size of the other. One had enlarged teeth, and the other had chitin protrusions from the forehead. Yet, the same three ingredients triggered evolution of extreme weapons in both cases. So it is with wasps, beetles, crabs, earwigs, elephants, and antelope. Despite extraordinary differences among these species, arms races are arms races, and the circumstances leading to big weapons are the same. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 277

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The same three ingredients trigger weapon evolution across wildly divergent animal clades; Extreme weapons evolved independently across roughly three thousand species — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 15; Biological weapons evolve through the same replication mechanism as their bearers — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 500 (+3 more)

Related

• The same three ingredients trigger weapon evolution across wildly divergent animal clades (similarity 0.96)
• Extreme weapons evolved independently across roughly three thousand species (similarity 0.89)
• Competition for reproduction drives evolution of nature’s biggest weapons (similarity 0.88)
• Extreme male weapons evolved independently at least eleven times in vinegar flies (similarity 0.87)
• Shared clade traits like lengthy female investment predispose entire lineages to weapon arms races (similarity 0.87)
• The evolutionary drivers of animal weapons also explain human weapon elaboration. (similarity 0.86)
• Biological weapons evolve through the same replication mechanism as their bearers (similarity 0.86)
• Identical circumstances trigger and collapse arms races in animals and humans. (similarity 0.86)
• Reproductive success, not survival, drives the largest animal weapons (similarity 0.85)
• Dueling plus competition and defensibility is the general rule for extreme weapons (similarity 0.85)
• Specific conditions are required before weapons escalate into an arms race (similarity 0.85)
• Three conditions must align to trigger an animal weapons arms race. (similarity 0.85)
• Sexual selection can be far stronger than natural selection and drives weapon extremes (similarity 0.85)
• Extreme skew in mating success drives arms-race escalation in weaponry (similarity 0.85)
• Human and animal arms races follow parallel evolutionary dynamics (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Extreme weapons evolved independently across roughly three thousand species #corroborates (0.70) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 15
• Biological weapons evolve through the same replication mechanism as their bearers #contradicts (0.65) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 500
• Extreme skew in mating success drives arms-race escalation in weaponry #contradicts (0.60)
• Weapon size in animal species is under stabilizing selection, not open-ended directional selection #contradicts (0.60) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 850