Optimal mechanisms for finding and selecting mates: how threespine stickleback ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ) should encode male throat colors

Eyespots divert attacks by fish

“…To study attack behaviour in fish, we used the three-spined stickleback as a predator in this study. We chose the three-spined stickleback because it is considered to be a primarily visual predator [23][24][25][26][27], it is widely occurring and can be easily maintained in aquaria. In nature, three-spined sticklebacks are often parasitized, and for example, the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus is known to dramatically affect their behaviour [28][29][30].…”

Confusion and dependence in uses of history

“…16 They analyze their data and then propose/suggest/request evolutionary explanations of them. In contrast to McLennan (McLennan et al 1988;McLennan and McPhail 1989a,b;McLennan 1991McLennan , 1993, Rowe et al (2004) did not use historical comparisons with past members of the same clade to predict details of stickleback coloration. Rather, they simply studied (nonhistorically) live stickleback coloration in great detail, and include/suggest/request speculation about the coloration of past family members in evolutionary explanations of their detailed nonhistorical findings.…”

“…Suppose further that no one else had used historical properties to make those predictions that she in fact did make. As it turns out, actual scientists before and after McLennan's studies had already collected the data that confirmed her predictions with nonhistorical properties simply by carefully observing and experimenting with sticklebacks (Pelkwijk and Tinbergen 1937;Tinbergen 1951Tinbergen , 1952Wilz 1970;Wooton 1973Wooton , 1984Rowland 1984Rowland , 1994Rowland and Sevenster 1985;Milinski and Bakker 1990;Milinski 1991, 1993;Fitzgerald 1993;Rowe et al 2004). Since the actual agent interpretation of the indispensability argument requires historical properties actually to be indispensable to actual scientists (premise 2 of the argument), we cannot use it to conclude that any historical properties are essential to any causal behavior if the work of no actual scientists makes premise 2 true.…”

“…To be sure, Rowe et al (2004) provide an incredibly detailed account of stickleback nuptial coloration using entirely nonhistorical sciences. 16 They analyze their data and then propose/suggest/request evolutionary explanations of them.…”

“…In contrast to the claim that we need to know the history of this behavior in order successfully to predict and explain it, Rowe et al (2004) and Kitano et al (2007Kitano et al ( , 2008 first identify and understand the subtle details and dynamics of this behavior using nonhistorical sciences, and then-as a second step-they include, suggest, and/or request evolutionary explanations for the behavior. In addition, as described in exhibit (C) toward the end of Sect.…”