Multivariate Quantitative Genetics And The Lek Paradox (2005-2007)

The Lek Paradox a long-standing controversy in evolutionary biology has been thought to have been resolved by recent findings of substantial genetic variance in single male display traits. We intend to conduct a series of experiments to demonstrate that an escape from the lek paradox although seemly possible for single male traits is not possible when multiple male traits are considered simultaneously in quantitative genetic analyses. By manipulating the force of sexual selection to demonstrate its effect on the additive genetic variance-covariance structure we will attempt to demonstrate the presence of the lek paradox in an Australian native species Drosophila serrata