Social competition environments evolve in tandem with weapons, unlike fluctuating physical environments

Evidence

This is not how sexual selection works. In battles for access to reproduction, males compete with rival males. The environment that matters for performance is a social one—other males with whom a male does battle—rather than temperature or sea level or other physical features of the landscape. And this social environment evolves in tandem with the weapons. As antlers or horns become bigger, so, too, does the standard against which a male must contend. Like a sliding scale, each increase in weapon size resets the baseline of the population, selecting, in turn, for yet another increase. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 182

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the key contrast — the social environment not being static — that underlies why sexual selection compounds rather than stabilizes.
• XREF: connects to: Operational sex ratio skew measures the intensity of sexual selection — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 688; Oscillating directional selection can produce net evolutionary stasis; Sexual selection is uniquely directional because the social environment itself evolves with the weapons (+13 more)

Related

• Sexual selection is uniquely directional because the social environment itself evolves with the weapons (similarity 0.94)
• Sexual selection stays directionally constant while physical natural selection oscillates (similarity 0.94)
• Sexual selection can be far stronger than natural selection and drives weapon extremes (similarity 0.91)
• Weapon evolution needs both competition and economically defensible resources (similarity 0.89)
• Competition for reproduction drives evolution of nature’s biggest weapons (similarity 0.89)
• Specific conditions are required before weapons escalate into an arms race (similarity 0.87)
• Sexual selection drives weapons to extremes because payoffs for winners are enormous. (similarity 0.86)
• Weapons evolve only when reproductive benefits exceed costs (similarity 0.86)
• Oscillating selection can produce stasis despite strong directional pressure (similarity 0.86)
• Specific ecological circumstances must align before weapon arms races begin (similarity 0.85)
• Oscillating directional selection can produce net evolutionary stasis (similarity 0.85)
• Markets and battlefields select among rifle designs like natural selection acts on weapons (similarity 0.85)
• Each weapon-size increase resets the competitive baseline, ratcheting populations upward (similarity 0.85)
• Reproductive success, not survival, drives the largest animal weapons (similarity 0.85)
• Weapon size in animal species is under stabilizing selection, not open-ended directional selection (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Economic logic explains weapon evolution across virtually all animal species #qualifies (0.50) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 198