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20 - Integrating mechanisms and function: prospects for future research
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- By H. Jane Brockmann, Department of Zoology University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611 USA, Rui F. Oliveira, Unidade de Investigação em Eco-Etologia Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada Rua Jardim do Tabaco 34 1149-041 Lisboa Portugal, Micheal Taborsky, Division of Behavioural Ecology Zoological Institute University of Bern Wohlenstrasse 50A CH-3032 Hinterkappelen Switzerland
- Edited by Rui F. Oliveira, Michael Taborsky, Universität Bern, Switzerland, H. Jane Brockmann, University of Florida
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- Book:
- Alternative Reproductive Tactics
- Published online:
- 10 August 2009
- Print publication:
- 13 March 2008, pp 471-489
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- Chapter
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Summary
CHAPTER SUMMARY
In this chapter we pull together the common threads of the other chapters of this book. In doing this we identify a number of issues that need further research. Rather than repeating what has been said before, we identify the features that stand out because they are unexplained, previously unrecognized or just neglected. We argue that to understand alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) we must use an approach that integrates the study of mechanisms and evolution.
WHAT IS NEXT IN THE STUDY OF ARTS?
Continuous variation in reproductive characters (behavior, morphology, physiology) is found in all species but the real puzzle comes in understanding the special cases in which variation is discontinuous and thus constitutes consistent, discretely different ways of achieving reproduction for animals within one population. If one phenotype were just a little less successful than the other, then we would expect it to be eliminated from the population over time by natural selection. It is for this reason that the maintenance of ARTs is an evolutionary puzzle. ARTs are also a puzzle to geneticists, physiologists, and developmental biologists who must explain how one genetic and developmental program can result in two different phenotypic outcomes. Our chief challenge is to draw together the genetic, developmental, behavioral, and physiological views of ARTs to understand the evolution of the mechanisms that we see as alternative phenotypes.