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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (66253)	12/18/2004 1:30:03 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I think your links support my interpretation of the term sexual selection. Esp. the dictionary.com link "Selection driven by the competition for mates, considered an adjunct to natural selection." If a man has sex with a woman but she doesn't become pregnant because she uses contraception she is still his mate. Of course once you have a mate they still have to be fertile, and woman can now make themselves deliberately infertile. I don't disagree that this could be an important consideration in terms of selection or evolutionary pressure, I just don't think its accurate to call it sexual selection. Abortion seems even further from sexual selection than contraception. The woman is fertile and conceives, she just kills her offspring before it develops. That doesn't seem to be sexual selection any more than infanticide is. Sexual selection is about success in getting a mate. If a male can't get a mate his genes get selected out. (It can work the other way as well but usually females don't have a problem getting a mate, at least if they are not to picky). His genes can get selected out for other reasons. Perhaps his mate in not fertile (either naturally or through contraception), perhaps his mate kills his offspring, or maybe his mate has poor genes and the offspring doesn't survive. Those are all cases of selection, just not sexual selection. Tim Edit stanfordalumni.org