Episode 63 - Sexual Selection

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Education, Natural Sciences, Earth Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 896 Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2019

⏱️ 114 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The history of animal life on Earth has been shaped by sex. The struggle to reproduce puts unique evolutionary pressures on species which affect their behavior and even their physical form. Sexual selection is immensely important but trying to sort out the side effects of sex in the fossil record is notoriously tricky. In the news: giant beavers, croc metabolism, schooling fish, and another new croc. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:06:30Main discussion, Part 1: 00:35:00Main discussion, Part 2: 01:10:30Patron question: 01:46:00 The Common Descent Store is open! Get merch! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures:http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPCFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcast/PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Muscial Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:19.0	Hi, David. Hi, Will.
0:21.7	And hello, listeners.
0:23.9	Welcome to episode 63 of the Common to Send podcast.
0:28.6	And today's episode is when I've been looking forward to because we are talking about sexual selection.
0:36.0	Yes, a very cool topic.
0:38.0	Yeah, this one's odd because it's something we're aware of,
0:43.0	but does not get discussed in detail very often,
0:47.0	or at least gets confused or misunderstood.
0:50.3	Half the things I looked up had some line in there
0:52.5	about how it is one of the most misunderstood
0:55.0	or often misreferenced pieces of evolutionary pressures.
1:02.6	Intriguing. Let's see if we can demystify it a bit.
1:05.5	Indeed. But before we get into the topics. So brief intro before we continue on, sexual selection is the
1:14.0	pressure on organisms. It's an evolutionary pressure like natural selection, but instead of
1:19.9	selecting for the best survivors, it's selecting for those who can reproduce most successfully.
1:30.1	And so this is what leads to all those weird mating dances and displays that we see in animals. And it has some very interesting and odd side
1:36.6	effects on the animals and other organisms. But what we'll be focusing on is what is sexual selection,
1:44.2	what are some of its side effects?
1:46.3	And since we are the Common Ascent podcast, how or when have we been able to study this in the fossil record?
1:54.0	You know, what are our limitations there and what examples of it have we found or been able to find?
2:00.1	Yeah.
	...

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