Do Craniofacial Characters Reflect Neutral Drift, Climatic Adaptation, or Sexual Selection?
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New York University Primatologist James Higham delivered an extraordinarily interesting talk on primate reproductive ecology at the Natural History museum this week. He pointed out that otherwise morphologically quite similar primate species can coexist sympatrically without interbreeding — some half a dozen of them in one particular rainforest. The vast bulk of the sexual signaling is carried out by facial characters. All primates know who is conspecific — a potential sex partner — and who is not through an exquisitely subtle sensitivity to facial characters. It is an extraordinary fact that no two people who aren't identical twins look alike; that we can recognize thousands, perhaps millions, of distinct faces; that we never forget a face even if the name of the acquaintance slips us. Across the primate order, we are tuned in to extremely subtle differences in facial characters.
Do Craniofacial Characters Reflect Neutral Drift, Climatic Adaptation, or Sexual Selection?
Do Craniofacial Characters Reflect Neutral…
Do Craniofacial Characters Reflect Neutral Drift, Climatic Adaptation, or Sexual Selection?
New York University Primatologist James Higham delivered an extraordinarily interesting talk on primate reproductive ecology at the Natural History museum this week. He pointed out that otherwise morphologically quite similar primate species can coexist sympatrically without interbreeding — some half a dozen of them in one particular rainforest. The vast bulk of the sexual signaling is carried out by facial characters. All primates know who is conspecific — a potential sex partner — and who is not through an exquisitely subtle sensitivity to facial characters. It is an extraordinary fact that no two people who aren't identical twins look alike; that we can recognize thousands, perhaps millions, of distinct faces; that we never forget a face even if the name of the acquaintance slips us. Across the primate order, we are tuned in to extremely subtle differences in facial characters.