Lecture

Sexual Selection: Evolutionary Psychology

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In course

HUM-275: Human evolutionary biology

La psychologie évolutionniste est une discipline située au carrefour de la biologie, de la psychologie, de l'anthropologie, des sciences sociales et naturelles qui examine les traits psychologiques et les comportements humains dans une perspective évolutio ...

Description

This lecture explores sexual selection, a component of natural selection, focusing on the struggle between individuals for reproductive success. Topics include intrasexual and intersex selection, mating systems, sexual dimorphism, and the influence of parental investment on reproductive strategies.

Instructor

Bruno Lemaitre

Personal Webpage http://brunolemaitre.ch Personal Webpage http://brunolemaitre.ch Teaching & PhD PhD Students Blandine Ribotta, Yao Tian, Désirée Popelka, Prince Kumar Sah, Siqi Wang, Kenan Krakovic, Nathan Alexandre Klotz Past EPFL PhD Students Sveta Chakrabarti, Olivier Binggeli, Jeremy Keith Herren, Juan Camilo Paredes Escobar, Alfred Chng, Maroun Bou Sleiman, Jan Paul Dudzic, Mario Gonzalo Garcia Arraez, Claudia Melcarne, Alice Marra, Bianca Marie Petrignani, Mark Austin Hanson, Alexia Laurie Carboni

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Biology

Genetics: Population genetics

Related concepts (30)

Disruptive selection

Disruptive selection, also called diversifying selection, describes changes in population genetics in which extreme values for a trait are favored over intermediate values. In this case, the variance of the trait increases and the population is divided into two distinct groups. In this more individuals acquire peripheral character value at both ends of the distribution curve. Natural selection is known to be one of the most important biological processes behind evolution.

Natural selection

Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not. Variation exists within all populations of organisms. This occurs partly because random mutations arise in the genome of an individual organism, and their offspring can inherit such mutations.

Parental investment

Parental investment, in evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, is any parental expenditure (e.g. time, energy, resources) that benefits offspring. Parental investment may be performed by both males and females (biparental care), females alone (exclusive maternal care) or males alone (exclusive paternal care). Care can be provided at any stage of the offspring's life, from pre-natal (e.g. egg guarding and incubation in birds, and placental nourishment in mammals) to post-natal (e.g.

Coloration evidence for natural selection

Animal coloration provided important early evidence for evolution by natural selection, at a time when little direct evidence was available. Three major functions of coloration were discovered in the second half of the 19th century, and subsequently used as evidence of selection: camouflage (protective coloration); mimicry, both Batesian and Müllerian; and aposematism. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, arguing from circumstantial evidence that selection by human breeders could produce change, and that since there was clearly a struggle for existence, that natural selection must be taking place.

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In this framework, psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and the liver, is common in evolutionary biology.

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