Usually, when evolutionary biologists see a trait thats really widespread across evolutionary lineages, we at least consider the idea that the trait is ancestral and was preserved in all those lineages, so why hadnt people considered that hypothesis for SSB ?

Julia Monk

Categorized in : Science

Wecant assign sexuality to animals were trying our best to learn about them by observing their behaviors, and those behaviors shouldnt be mapped onto human cultural and societal contexts.

If Caitlin McDonough assume a trait like SSB is a new development and has high costs, its going to be really hard to understand how it could become more and more common from those low initial frequencies, it would have to have really large fitness benefits, or be otherwise impervious to natural selection, for that outcome to be probable.