Is there a credible difference of social selection and sexual selection within a nexus of artifical and natural selection?
That seems to me to be the question.
In trying to make a case of the interactions that *might* occur in species selection Gould relates (SETH p 732)
quote:
This crucial condition can be validated at the organismic level- not because mutation represents a process so differnt from natural selection, and operating on material (the structure of DNA)so disparate from the bodies of organisms (integrated tissues and organs), that we cannot postulate a reason why favored directions of mutation should correspond in anyway to the needs of organisms.
I have no way of juding the gender role reversal of the author just as I can have no expectation that you or anyone else %should% believe me that I am inclined to social selection particularly because the conflict in my own reproductive effort happened AFTER not before agreeable sex. I do not know for sure how it happened in my lovers' mind but that is never what I have access to anyway.
So now to your observation.
Perhaps I should not have directed EVC to the links but should have copied some of this:
SCIENCE(see below)
What I was trying to ask you when you related
quote:
male combat and female choice (the 'old' terminology)
quote:
intra- and inter-sexual selection
was the difference of social and sexual selection.
It seemed to me that
a priori one might consider male combat and female choice as not only intra-sexual selection and that inter- sexual selection, (perhaps you can say again what you meant by that ( that might be my only issue here, I dont know) if it did not consider social selection of Roughgarden et al, can not accomodate any reverse asymmetry (your word) capability of +> and 0+ no matter what the origin of sex itself was. Thus I do not think that I am disputing the notion of "gender."
quote:
Published this May by UC Press, Evolution’s Rainbow calls for the “outright abandonment of Darwin’s sexual selection theory” and posits a new theory of “social selection” to take its place.
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I do not see the real issue as being about role reversal. Correct me if I am wrong or have misread what your are writing. It seems to me that what is at issue is if something we might only be thinking about as artifical selection is an "aspect" of natural selection due to 'social' aspects AFTER the arrival of the molecular existence of sex (thus why it matters if sexual selection is primative rather than derivative (if "yes" than Roughgarden and I would be wrong (as argued in this thread) but if "no" then... well...))which would ipso facto then imply a different ESS (evolutionary stable strategy decided) division.
This came out by Roughgarden et al explaining to the letters to SCIENCE in VOL312 p 694(see tumbnail below) where they named "old fashioned" ESS and their version, which includes "strategies developed in behavioral time". So when you say,
quote:
it has specific ecological correlates that result in a reversal of the asymmetries between male and female.
is the "ecology" meant in the 'old' fashioned of Roughgarden sense?
You also said,
quote:
The asymmetries between the sexes, starting with the differential investment in gametes (anisogamy), and ending with differential investment in parental care, create many incontrovertable conflicts between the sexes that are resolved in different ways in different species. The author attempts to dismiss the significance of these differences in a very unconvincing manner.
The only way right now that I can start to figure out what you mean is if Gould is wrong and that I am free to explain how favored mutation directions correspond with organismal needs, which I am tempted to do but is not due if I have misread you.
This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 05-12-2006 03:15 PM