Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Clifton SM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5136597 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Clifton Sara M SM Braun Rosemary I RI Abrams Daniel M DM
Proceedings. Biological sciences 20161101 1843
Species spanning the animal kingdom have evolved extravagant and costly ornaments to attract mating partners. Zahavi's handicap principle offers an elegant explanation for this: ornaments signal individual quality, and must be costly to ensure honest signalling, making mate selection more efficient. Here, we incorporate the assumptions of the handicap principle into a mathematical model and show that they are sufficient to explain the heretofore puzzling observation of bimodally distributed orna ...[more]