Sexual Conflict
Sexual conflict refers to the conflicting goals of breeding males and females. It describes the diverging interests of males and females in optimizing their fitness. From the viewpoint of any one partner, the best outcome would be for the partner's mate to care for the young, thus freeing up his or her own resources (e.g., time and energy) that s/he - but typically he - can invest in further sex that may create additional offspring. In polygynous mating systems, sexual conflict means the optimization of male reproductive success by having mated with multiple females, even though the reproductive success of a polygynously mated female is thereby reduced.Such can be the case for the Guianan Cock-of-the-rocks, whose male members spend a majority of their time and energy into maintaining their plumage and attempting to seek the most matings. Females on the other hand, spend their time building and maintaining their nest where they will lay their eggs and raise the young.
Read more about this topic: Sexy Son Hypothesis
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“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)