Integrating ecology and evolution: how does sexual selection affect population fitness and extinction?

提高我们对种群适应性的理解可以在进化和保护生物学方面取得重要的新进展。人们认为性选择对种群的适应性有利也有弊，但不幸的是，这两种相反的影响都是单独研究的。该项目将发展新的理论，以解决对种群适合度的定义及其与性选择的关系的困惑。它还提出了雄心勃勃的实验进化和定量遗传研究，这些研究将经验性地衡量性选择对种群适应性和灭绝的净影响。该项目旨在促进种群适应性研究的变化，并解决当代进化生物学中一个明显的空白。

Improving our understanding of population fitness could produce important new advances in evolutionary and conservation biology. Sexual selection has been proposed to both help and harm population fitness, but unfortunately these opposing effects have been studied in isolation. This project will develop new theory to resolve confusion over the definition of population fitness and its relationship with sexual selection. It also proposes ambitious experimental evolution and quantitative genetic studies that will empirically measure the net effect of sexual selection on population fitness and extinction. This project aims to catalyse a change in the study of population fitness and address a conspicuous gap in contemporary evolutionary biology.