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Институт проблем экологии и эволюции им. А.Н. Северцова РАН


E.N. Panov. Sexual Selection: Theory or Myth. Field Zoology against an Armchair Knowledge. Moscow: KMK Scientific Press Ltd. 2014. 412 p., ref. 776, 112 figs.

This book presents a critical analysis of the so-called sexual selection theory and how its predictions fit the empirical results initially used to shape it. The history of the question, consisting of four stages, is given. 1. The idea of sexual selection was suggested by Charles Darwin in 1871 and mostly negatively perceived by the scientific community of the time. 2. A long period of no mention of sexual selection in the scientific literature. 3. Re-formulation of Darwin's idea by the mathematician Robert Fisher (1903–1930) in the terms of population genetics. 4. A new wave of interest to this topic in the 1970s – 1980s, after which the Darwin-Fisher theory was rapidly uncritically accepted by the bulk of biologists and turned into the ruling doctrine of “normal science”, following the pattern described by Thomas S. Kuhn in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, by the “do as I do” principle. Six main foundations of the sexual selection doctrine are analysed (e.g. distinction between among-and between-sex selection, the handicap idea etc.). In subsequent chapters each of these foundations is treated, looking into fit or lack of fit to the empirical results from most representative studies of the respective topic. Social and psychological motives of conformism in current zoology are analysed, based on the lack of serious attempts to falsify hypotheses that underlie the ruling concepts. The recent trend to go away from the firm belief into the reality of sexual selection is shown. The book presents much data on sexual relationships in various groups of animals, from arthropods to mammals.


На передней обложке: «Выбор» самкой «лучшего» из самцов (ядро доктрины полового отбора). Фото автора

Половой отбор: теория или миф? Полевая зоология против кабинетного знания

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