"Free" Loom point

[Ronin]

I have never gotten a loompoint from such attention whoring threads... so good luck.

[RobertOfDrugsley]

plox stop sucking at internet c-rpg community. Now dance for my entertainment!

See, I knew it! All you want is a virtual freak show! If it had only been about pleasing you sexually for a loom point I'd have been first in line, mouth open and eyes closed.

[Anita_Henjaab]

sucky sucky , FIGH dollah,  ooooh 1 looooom?

[CrazyCracka420]

Too bad I'm not an aussie...actually I'd rather play with 0 looms and live in NA (low ping baby) than live with kangaroos and have 100 mw's

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

Oh what I would do for 100mw's, you jest sir! I play with 300 when I can be fucked.

Now were are the dancing lady boys?

[Kincore]

Explaining the evolution of male care has proved difficult. Recent theory predicts that female promiscuity and sexual selection on males inherently disfavour male care. In sharp contrast to these expectations, male-only care is often found in species with high extra-pair paternity and striking variation in mating success, where current theory predicts female-only care. Using a model that examines the coevolution of male care, female care and female choice; I show that inter-sexual selection can drive the evolution of male care when females are able to bias mating or paternity towards parental males. Surprisingly, female choice for parental males allows male care to evolve despite low relatedness between the male and the offspring in his care. These results imply that predicting how sexual selection affects parental care evolution will require further understanding of why females, in many species, either do not prefer or cannot favour males that provide care.

Keywords: evolutionary theory, coevolution, sexual selection, mate choice, parental investment


Research has focused on understanding when and why individuals of either sex provide parental care, with a particular focus on why in many taxa, females are more likely to care for their young than males [1–8]. While natural selection and evolutionary history clearly influence parental care evolution [3,4,9,10], recent theory examining sex differences in care has focused on how sexual selection interacts with parental investment. The general conclusion has been that, all else being equal, sexual selection on males disfavours the evolution of paternal care [1–9,11]. For males, uncertainty of paternity is argued to decrease the fitness benefit of caring for offspring (because the male is less related to the young in his care), while successful males are argued to lose mating success when they provide parental care [1–9,11]. Male care is thus argued to evolve when natural selection (in the form of increased offspring survival) favouring parental care is stronger than sexual selection against male care [2–5].

This argument cannot, however, explain the existence of male-only care across diverse taxa, including amphibians [10], arthropods [12], fishes [13] and birds [9] (where it is thought to be ancestral [14]). In the great tinamou, for example, females mate and leave offspring with multiple males, and males care for these offspring alone despite low paternity [15,16]. In the tessellated darter, males will care for completely unrelated young in order to attract females [17], and in sea spiders only males carry the eggs, despite sexual selection on males favouring higher male mating rates [18]. Current theory fails to explain the many species in which male-only care is found in the presence of sexual selection on males. Existing theory has shown, however, that the fitness benefits of paternal care can select for female preferences favouring parental males (the ‘good parent’ process of sexual selection, [19]) and these preferences can select for males to display their parental quality [20–24]. This theory has not, however, considered the way female preferences simultaneously coevolve with both male and female parental effort.

Inspired by this inability of current theory to explain the evolution of male-only care [2,5,25], I developed a coevolutionary model to ask how female preference evolution is predicted to interact with and affect the coevolution of male and female care. The inclusion of female-driven mating or paternity biases, considered here, is a key departure from both classic and recent theory [2,3,5,26], shown below to have significant effects on both male and female parental care evolution. I examine a situation in which male and female parental care is initially rare, but where paternal behaviour or traits directly associated with male care can be observed. I find that inter-sexual selection owing to the female-driven mating or fertilization biases can coevolve with parental effort and favour the evolution of paternal care and the loss of maternal care.


PS :

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Give me the loompoint 

[alfasonni]

OMG GIVE FREE LOOMZ I HAZ NONE

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

You people suck, sans Armpit who attempted in vein to up the ante.

[Varadin]

Who cares about your lp

[Zandieer]

I am very poor No loomies ever had. Please gibe.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

Okay this shit show is now over, looks like everyone loses. Including yours truly.