31–34 of 34 posts
Crazy-complicated sexes are extremely common in the plant world, probably an adaptation to sessile life and difficult seed propagation. I.e., I would guess that plants that have easy seed propagation have less complicated sexes, but I don't know.
It's a common idea that evolution propagates useful mutations, and the non-useful disappear. How does it help a bird to have four sexes? Or maybe it's just irrelevant for birds. Birds appear to break many laws of nature other animals have to abide by. They fly, they move where they want. They stay close to humans, observe them, and easily avoid them. They're amazingly energetic for how big they are. They migrate extr…
By making procreation harder to achieve, you intensify the selection effect, since only the fittest individuals will be able to achieve it. So maybe it can be thought of as a kind of extra layer of "culling of the weakest" built into the genetics of the species?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article seemed to suggest that non-cross pairs are not observed at all, but they needed more genetic testing to determine if tan/tan never happens. Even if the tan/tan is still physiologically possible it may be the case that they still won't mate even if there are no white present at all due to required mating signals being missing.
From a different article: So are females most strongly attracted to the tough, macho, white-striped males? Actually, no. Lab studies have found that females of either morph prefer the tan-striped males. White-striped females, more pushy than their tan-striped sisters, grab the tan-striped bachelors right away, so these pairs form more quickly than the opposite combination. Males of both morphs tend to prefer the whit…