thumb|250px|Sexual selection creates colourful [[sexual dimorphism|differences between sexes in Goldie's bird-of-paradise. Male above; female below. Painting by John Gerrard Keulemans.|alt=painting of male and female birds of paradise]]
Sexual selection is a mechanism of evolution in which members of one sex choose mates of the other sex (intersexual selection) to mate with, and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex (intrasexual selection). These two forms of selection mean that some individuals have greater reproductive success than others within a population, for example because they are more attractive or prefer more attractive partners to produce offspring. Successful males benefit from frequent mating and monopolizing access to one or more fertile females. Females can maximise the return on the energy they invest in reproduction by selecting and mating with the best males.
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The concept was first articulated by Charles Darwin who wrote of a "second agency" other than natural selection, in which competition between mate candidates could lead to speciation. The theory was given a mathematical basis by Ronald Fisher in the early 20th century. Sexual selection can lead males to extreme efforts to demonstrate their fitness to be chosen by females, producing sexual dimorphism in secondary sexual characteristics, such as the ornate plumage of birds-of-paradise and peafowl, or the antlers of deer. Depending on the species, these rules can be reversed. This is caused by a positive feedback mechanism known as a Fisherian runaway, where the passing-on of the desire for a trait in one sex is as important as having the trait in the other sex in producing the runaway effect. Although the sexy son hypothesis indicates that females would prefer male offspring, Fisher's principle explains why the sex ratio is most often 1:1.
Sexual selection is widely distributed in the animal kingdom, and is also found in plants and fungi.
History
Darwin
thumb |upright |Victorian cartoonists mocked Darwin's ideas about display in sexual selection. Here he is fascinated by the apparent [[steatopygia in the latest fashion.|alt=Victorian era cartoon of Darwin as a monkey looking at a woman in a bustle dress]]
Sexual selection was first proposed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species (1859) and developed in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), as he felt that natural selection alone was unable to account for certain types of non-survival adaptations. He once wrote to a colleague that "The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!" His work divided sexual selection into male–male competition and female choice.