The evolution of beauty How Darwin's forgotten theory of mate choice shapes the animal world-- and us

Review by New York Times Review

THE EVOLUTION OF BEAUTY: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us, by Richard 0. Prum. (Doubleday, $30.) A mild-mannered ornithologist makes an impassioned case for the importance of Darwin's second theory as his most radical and feminist. COMING TO MY SENSES: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, by Alice Waters with Cristina Mueller and Bob Carrau. (Clarkson Potter, $27.) The founder of Chez Panisse describes her early days, explaining how a visit to France awakened her interest in excellent food and how she came to embrace the use of organic ingredients. FASTING AND FEASTING: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray, by Adam Federman. (Chelsea Green, $25.) Federman's biography is the first of a cult food writer who became famous with the 1986 publication of her influential book "Honey From a Weed." SING, UNBURIED, SING, by Jesmyn Ward. (Scribner, $26.) In her follow-up to the National Book Award-winning novel "Salvage the Bones," Ward tells the story of a Mississippi woman intent on making her fractured family whole again. THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1898, by Richard White. (Oxford, $35.) This sweeping history of the decades after the Civil War decries the spoliations White sees everywhere among Robber Barons and corrupt politicians. THE INTERNATIONALISTS: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World, by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro. (Simon & Schuster, $30.) The two authors argue for the historic importance of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, an international agreement usually dismissed by historians as ineffectual and quixotic. In their revisionist view, the pact "reshaped the world map" and "catalyzed the human rights revolution." RESET: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, by Ellen K. Pao. (Spiegel & Grau, $28.) Combining memoir, self-help, tell-all and manifesto, Pao recalls the disillusionment that led her to sue a venture capital firm for gender discrimination. She lost, but showed the hurdles women still face in many fields. THE MISFORTUNE OF MARION PALM, by Emily Culliton. (Knopf, $25.95.) In Culliton's delightful and sneakily feminist debut novel, a Brooklyn mother is on the lam after embezzling thousands of dollars from her daughters' private school. BONES: Brothers, Horses, Cartels, and the Borderland Dream, by Joe Tone. (One World, $28.) A reporter brilliantly recounts the tale of a Texas bricklayer who laundered drug money for his brother, a cartel boss in Mexico, via the horse-racing industry. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 16, 2018]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Ornithologist Prum puts it best in his introduction to Darwin's neglected theory of sexual selection: desire and the object of that desire shape each other over evolutionary time. The task of attracting a mate and passing one's genes to the next generation is open-ended, with each species evolving its own standard of beauty, so it's no wonder that the ten-thousand species of birds evolved an almost equal number of standards. Darwin's theory also introduced the idea of female mate choice, with female preference for a particular male serving as a mechanism of evolution. The author describes the fantastic display of the male argus pheasant, with the female casting a discerning eye over his plumage and presentation. Prum goes on to discuss the elaborate dances of a tropical group of birds called manakins, the evolution of plumage color from dinosaur feathers to bird feathers, the kinky qualities of duck sex, and the ramifications of sexual selection in human sex. While Prum's inquiry is firmly based in scientific research, with notes and bibliography to match, his humor and personal anecdotes make for compelling reading.--Bent, Nancy Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Prum, a professor of ornithology at Yale, provocatively questions whether virtually all biologists have misunderstood a core concept first proposed by Charles Darwin. As Prum explains, the vast majority of evolutionary biologists consider sexual selection, in which females choose males with whom to mate, to be a type of natural selection. Male ornamentation, such as peacock tail feathers, arises as a means to advertise health and virility. Using his own research on tropical birds as a base, Prum follows Darwin in positing that such ornamentation has no such signaling value and arises instead for its aesthetic value-a value determined solely by the females of a species. Presenting persuasive supporting data while clearly articulating much about the scientific process, Prum maintains that a correct reading of sexual selection indicates that it is a potent mechanism for females to develop sexual autonomy. By controlling various aspects of male behavior through mate choice, Prum argues that females of many species have reduced the incidence of rape while increasing male sociality. He also offers hypotheses for the evolution of the female orgasm and homosexuality while embedding the concept of feminism solidly within a biological framework. Prum crosses many boundaries while provoking readers to consider Darwin's ignored idea as a new paradigm. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In this thought-provoking exploration of sexual selection as an evolutionary force, Prum (ornithology, Yale Univ.) argues that Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection isn't the only thing driving evolution. Sexual selection is the idea that the female is responsible for more than modern-day scientists are comfortable admitting, by choosing mates based on attributes that are aesthetically pleasing rather than serving some sort of function to further the species. For example, in order to attract a mate, the male great argus pheasant builds an "arena" by clearing out sticks and leaves, waits for a female to approach, and then expands his feathers, which are covered in multicolored optical illusion spheres, and dances around. Prum argues in favor of Darwin's theory that this mating ritual, along with others, is the culmination of evolution through mate choice, that individuals have the capacity to choose mates with the ornaments they prefer. He expands this theory mostly through his ornithological studies but also casts the methodology onto humans as well, which is much easier to comprehend. Prum's prose is simple and enjoyable enough for the Darwinian-challenged to understand while based in enough scientific evidence to engage those who might disagree with the ideas presented. VERDICT An intriguing look at a forgotten-and ignored-piece of Darwinism. Casual readers and science buffs alike will surely appreciate this book. [Prepub Alert, 11/21/2016.]-Tyler Hixson, School Library Journal © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A robust defense of Charles Darwin's aesthetic theory of evolution.Prum (Ornithology/Yale Univ.), the head curator of vertebrate zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, argues that natural selection is not the only evolutionary mechanism at work in nature. Beauty and desire in nature are also dynamic forces, and those features in males that females prefer in choosing mates evolve rapidly. In a nutshell, each species evolves its own standard of beauty by which it chooses mates. After a brief discussion of the early and continued opposition to Darwin's aesthetic theory, the author illustrates the role of beauty in bird mating by taking readers to Borneo to observe the rituals of the Great Argus, a species of pheasant known as "one of the most aesthetically extreme animals on the planet," and to Suriname, to see the displays of male manakins, which must meet the "very high standards" of potential female mates. In other chapters, Prum reveals the intricate machinery involved in female bowerbirds choosing their mates. Female ducks, it seems, may not have such autonomy. Readers may be in for a shock when Prum turns to duck sex, which can be violent, involving what humans would call gang rape, and the illustrations of record-setting duck penises are eye-opening. The author, who charmingly reveals his lifelong fascination with birds, does not base his argument solely on avian evolution, however. In later chapters, he explores the role of female mate choice in primate evolution, a challenging subject that he views as warranting further study. Throughout, the narrative is well-documented and wholly accessible, enriched by the author's warm personal touches. Prum writes that his goal was to present the "full, distinctive richness, complexity, and diversity of this aesthetic view of life." He absolutely succeeds, though fierce debate will continue among evolutionary biologists. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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CHAPTER 3 Manakin Dances How, and why, has beauty changed within and among bird species over the course of millions of years? What determines what any given species finds beautiful? What, in short, is the evolutionary history of avian beauty? These questions might seem impossible to answer, but we actually have many of the scientific tools we need to address them productively. One of the challenges to understanding the evolution of beauty is the complexity of animal displays and mating preferences. Fortunately, we do not need to invent a trendy new brand of "systems science" in order to investigate these complex aesthetic repertoires, because the science of natural history--the observation and description of the lives of organisms in their natural environments--provides us with exactly the tools we need. Natural history was a critical component of Darwin's scientific method and remains a bedrock foundation of much of evolutionary biology today.  Once we have gathered information about individual species, we need other scientific methods to compare and analyze them and to uncover their complicated, often hierarchical evolutionary histories. The scientific discipline that enables us to do that is called phylogenetics. Phylogeny is the history of evolutionary relationships among organisms--what Darwin called the "great Tree of Life." Darwin proposed that discovery of the Tree of Life should become a major branch of evolutionary biology. Unfortunately, research interest in phylogeny was largely abandoned by evolutionary biology during most of the twentieth century. However, powerful new methods for reconstructing and analyzing phylogenies have been developed in recent decades, which has led to a revival of interest. So, now that the two critical intellectual tools necessary to study the evolution of beauty--natural history and phylogenetics--are available, there has never been a better time to be asking questions about how beauty, and the taste for it, evolve.  Doing so will help us to understand the process of evolutionary radiation--diversification among species--in a new way. In evolutionary biology, adaptive radiation is the process by which a single common ancestor evolves through natural selection into a diversity of species that have a great variety of ecologies or anatomical structures. The amazing diversity of Darwin's Finches (Geospizinae) on the Galápagos Islands is a canonical example of adaptive radiation. In this chapter, however, we will investigate another group of birds--the neotropical manakins--in order to understand a different kind of evolutionary process: aesthetic radiation. Aesthetic radiation is the process of diversification and elaboration from a single common ancestor through some mechanism of aesthetic selection--especially mate choice. Aesthetic radiation does not preclude the occurrence of adaptive mate choice, but also includes arbitrary mate choice for sexual beauty alone, with all of its often dramatic coevolutionary consequences.  The science of beauty requires that we get out of the laboratory and the museum and into the field. Fortunately, my bird-watching youth was great basic training for doing natural history research on birds in the field. I discovered the second critical element of this branch of beauty studies--phylogenetics--as an undergraduate at Harvard University. My immersion in formal ornithological studies began in the fall of 1979 with a freshman seminar, the Biogeography of South American Birds taught by Dr. Raymond A. Paynter Jr., the curator of birds at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). Dr. Paynter introduced me to the intellectual magic of natural history museums. Up on the fifth floor of the huge and ancient brick building that housed the Bird Department was a series of rooms where hundreds of thousands of scientific bird specimens were curated. During my undergraduate years, the MCZ was my intellectual home. I hung out a lot in the bird collections doing bibliographic work and curatorial tasks for Paynter and generally smelling like mothballs. Dr. Paynter himself was far too intellectually conservative and cautious to be interested in the revolutionary new field of phylogenetics. But I soon discovered that the latest concepts and methods in this field were being hotly debated downstairs in the Romer Library in the weekly meetings of the Biogeography and Systematics Discussion Group. In retrospect, this time at Harvard was a golden era for phylogenetics. From the meetings of this "revolutionary cell" in the Romer Library, multiple graduate students went out into the world and made fundamental contributions to the field, helping to bring phylogeny back into the mainstream of evolutionary biology. My own work was profoundly shaped by those weekly discussions in the early 1980s. I became fascinated by phylogenetic methods and eager to reconstruct avian family trees. For my senior honors project, I worked on the phylogeny and biogeography of toucans and barbets. Working at a desk I made for myself on a big table beneath the towering skeleton of an extinct moa in room 507 of the bird collection, I was excited to make observations of toucan plumage and skeletal characters and to construct my first phylogenies. I am happy to say that I have been continuously associated with world-class scientific collections of birds ever since. Only, I don't smell like mothballs anymore. As graduation approached, I was casting about for what to do next, searching for a research program that would combine my bird-watching skills and passion with my new obsession with avian phylogeny. Before going on to graduate school, I was desperate to get to South America and to see more of the birds I had met in the drawers at the MCZ. (There were very few tropical bird field guides in those days, so browsing through a museum collection was actually the best way to learn about the birds before actually seeing them in real life.) Intrigued by the Harvard graduate student Jonathan Coddington's research using the phylogeny of spiders to test hypotheses about the evolution of orb-web-weaving behavior, I wanted to make a similar use of phylogeny to study the evolution of bird behavior. At about that time, I met Kurt Fristrup, a Harvard graduate student, who had worked on the behavior of the flamboyantly orange Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola rupicola, Cotingidae) (color plate 5), one of the planet's most amazing birds. Kurt suggested, "Why don't you go to Suriname to map manakin leks?" In retrospect, this was one of the most consequential pieces of professional advice I ever received. On a thin branch twenty-five feet high in the sun-dappled understory of a tropical rain forest in Suriname perches a tiny glossy black bird with a brilliantly golden yellow head, bright white eyes, and ruby-red thighs--a male Golden-headed Manakin ( Ceratopipra erythrocephala )(color plate 6). He weighs about a third of an ounce (ten grams), or a bit less than two U.S. quarters. He has a short neck and short tail, giving him a compact body, but he has a nervous energy that belies his almost dumpy appearance. He sings a high, soft, descending whistled puuu and peers intently around, hyperaware of his surroundings. In moments, a second male whistles back from his perch in an adjacent tree, and then a third nearby. The male answers immediately. His social environment is obviously the focus of his keen attention. In all, there are five males clustered together in the forest. They are obscured from one another by foliage, but they are all within earshot of each other. In response to the neighboring calls, the first male draws himself up into a statuesque upright posture with his light-colored bill pointing upward. After singing an energetic, syncopated, and raspy puu-prrrrr-pt ! call, he suddenly flies from his perch to another branch twenty-five yards away. After a few seconds, he flies rapidly back to his main perch singing an accelerating crescendo of seven or more kew calls in flight. His flight path traces a subtle S-curve trajectory, first down below the level of the perch and then up above it. He lands on the perch from above while uttering a sharp buzzy szzzkkkt ! Immediately upon landing, the male lowers his head, holds his body horizontal to the branch, and raises his rear up with his legs extended, revealing bright red thighs against his black belly, like a provocatively colored pair of breeches. He then slides backward along the perch in the tiny rapid steps of an elegant "moonwalk," as if on roller skates. In the middle of the moonwalk, he flicks his rounded black wings open vertically above his back for a moment. After sliding backward for twelve inches along the branch, the male suddenly lowers and fans his tail, flicks his wings vertically again, and resumes his normal posture. Moments later, the second male Golden-headed Manakin flies in and perches on another branch about five yards away. The first male immediately flies to join him, and they sit quietly side by side--but facing away from each other--in the dramatic upright posture. Intense, competitive, but mutually tolerant, the two males are deeply engaged with each other. This scene is just a few moments in the bizarre social world of a Golden-headed Manakin lek. A lek is an aggregation of male display territories. Lekking males defend territories, but these territories lack any resources that females might need for reproduction other than sperm: no significant food, nest sites, nest materials, or other material assistance to the female. Golden-headed Manakins defend individual territories between five and ten yards wide, with two to five such territories grouped together. Leks are essentially sites where males put themselves on display in order to lure females to mate with them. Over the breeding season, individual females visit one or more leks, observe male displays, evaluate these displays, and then choose one of those males as their mate.  Lek breeding is a form of polygyny (one male with many potential mates) that results from female mate choice. In a lek-breeding system, females can select any mate they want, and they are often nearly unanimous in preferring a small fraction of the available males. So a relatively few males get to mate with a relatively large number of females. The skew in mating success is rather like the contemporary skew in income distribution. The most sexually successful males are very successful and account for half or more of all the matings, while other males will never have any opportunity to mate in a given year. Some males go their whole lives without mating. After mating, female manakins build nests, lay clutches of two eggs, incubate them, and care for the developing young entirely on their own without any help from the males, whose contributions to reproduction end with their sperm donations. Because females do all the work, they don't depend on the males for anything, and their independence allows them almost total sexual autonomy. This freedom of mate choice has allowed extreme preferences to evolve; females only choose the few males whose behavioral and morphological features meet their very high standards. The rest will be losers in the mating game. Thus the aesthetic extremity of male manakins is an evolutionary consequence of extreme aesthetic failure , which results from strong sexual selection by mate choice. Female manakins have been choosing their mates in leks for about fifteen million years. Over the course of time, the features they have preferred have evolved into an extraordinary diversity of traits and behaviors among the approximately fifty-four species of manakins distributed from southern Mexico to northern Argentina. Manakin leks are among nature's most creative and extreme laboratories of aesthetic evolution. For me, they proved the perfect place to study Beauty Happening. Excerpted from The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us by Richard O. Prum All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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