Beauty beacon: correlated strategies for the Fisher runaway process

Abstract: Suppose that females choose males based on attributes that do not signal any genetic quality that is not related to the choice itself. Can being choosy confer selective advantage in this situation? We introduce correlated strategies, which means that females, when making their choice, may take into consideration external and independent random factors that are known to be observable by all. Individual-based simulation is used to show that, in this case, choosiness can emerge against the cost of over 25\% when pitted against randomly mating females. Moreover, after being established in the population, it can sustain costs of over 35\% . While such costs are not biologically plausible, they demonstrate unequivocally that sexual choice is a strong evolutionary force. Thus, correlated strategies are shown to be an evolutionary tool that channels randomness from the environment into genetic diversity. In addition, it turns out that a higher number of attributes in the ornament makes the choice more advantageous, which may result in a runaway complexity of sexual traits. Implications for the evolution of (female) cognitive abilities and speciation are discussed.