Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA06489 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 20 Jun 2001 15:35:54 +0100 Message-ID: <3B30B408.D5DA1BE3@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 15:32:40 +0100 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: sexual selection and memes References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745F20@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Vincent Campbell wrote:
>
> Very interesting.
>
> Can one assume, or does the study consider that offspring receiving high
> male parental investment conduct high mpi themselves?
>
> Maybe all they get is the appearance of high mpi from being well looked
> after, and subsequently get the females regardless of how they then behave
> as parents.
I agree you'd expect cheaters that always display large badges, but I'm
not sure if there wouldn't still be a difference between well cared for
and otherwise (this wasn't really gone into in any depth in the paper).
As for the investment of sons reflecting that of fathers, the authors
did state fairly strongly that this was indeed the case.
I think the thing is that most of these sexually selected indicators are
just a facility to display a trait, whereas the 'degree' to which that
trait is displayed is always a measure of realised fitness (i.e. fitness
of other genes, or in our case, fitness of memes). I think to lose the
parental behaviour after having experienced it would only be possible if
the sparrows lost their general learning ability, which would reduce
their overall fitness considerably; so perhaps this is why there don't
appear to be any cheaters (not that they looked particularly hard
actually). Also I should mention that birds born early in the season
tended to always have larger badges than late birds because life is
generally better for the earlier broods. If I could get the bloody
Nature site to work properly (gits) then I'd send round a PDF of it (I
will if you like when I finally get one, because it's been a few months
since I last read it).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jun 20 2001 - 15:39:45 BST