Sexual Selection - Criticism

Criticism

Joseph Jordania proposed that in explaining brilliant body colors, various morphological additions ("ornaments"), wide range of vocalizations and strange display behaviors ("antics") in animal species Darwin neglected a very important factor of natural selection – warning display (known also as aposematism). Warning display uses virtually the same arsenal of visual, audio, olfactory and behavioral features as sexual selection. According to the principle of aposematism, in order to avoid costly physical violence and to replace violence with the ritualized forms of display, many animal species use different forms of warning display: visual signals (contrastive body colors, eyespots, body ornaments, threat display and various postures to look bigger), audio signals (hissing, growling, group vocalizations), olfactory signals (producing strong body odors, particularly when excited or scared), behavioral signals (demonstratively slow walking, aggregation in large groups, aggressive display behavior against predators and conspecific competitors). According to Jordania, most of these warning displays were incorrectly attributed by the proponents of sexual selection to the forces of sexual selection.