High male sexual investment as a driver of extinction in fossil ostracods

@article{Martins2018HighMS,
  title={High male sexual investment as a driver of extinction in fossil ostracods},
  author={M J F Martins and Terry Markham Puckett and Rowan Lockwood and John P. Swaddle and Gene Hunt},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2018},
  volume={556},
  pages={366-369}
}
Sexual selection favours traits that confer advantages in the competition for mates. In many cases, such traits are costly to produce and maintain, because the costs help to enforce the honesty of these signals and cues1. Some evolutionary models predict that sexual selection also produces costs at the population level, which could limit the ability of populations to adapt to changing conditions and thus increase the risk of extinction2–4. Other models, however, suggest that sexual selection… 
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Shifts in sexual dimorphism across a mass extinction in ostracods: implications for sexual selection as a factor in extinction risk
TLDR
It is suggested that sexual selection and the allocation of resources towards survival versus reproduction may be an important factor for species extinction during both background and mass extinctions.
Sexual selection predicts the persistence of populations within altered environments.
TLDR
It is found that both horn presence and relative size are strongly positively associated with species persistence and abundance in altered habitats, and this study represents the first evidence from a field system of a population-level benefit from pre-copulatory sexual selection.
Male‐biased sexual selection, but not sexual dichromatism, predicts speciation in birds
TLDR
The findings support the view that male‐biased sexual selection, as measured by frequent predictors of male‐male competition, has shaped diversification in the largest radiation of birds.
Sexual selection, environmental robustness, and evolutionary demography of maladapted populations: A test using experimental evolution in seed beetles
TLDR
Seed beetles evolved under three alternative mating regimes to disentangle the contributions of sexual selection, fecundity selection, and male–female coevolution to individual reproductive success and population fitness and found evidence that sexual selection on males had positive genetic effects on female fitness components across environments, supporting good‐genes sexual selection.
Sexual selection, environmental robustness and evolutionary demography of maladapted populations: a test using experimental evolution in seed beetles
TLDR
Seed beetles evolved under three alternative mating regimes to disentangle the contributions of sexual selection, fecundity selection and male-female coevolution to individual reproductive success and population fitness and suggest that sex-specific selection can cause differences in environmental robustness that may impact population demography under environmental change.
Sexual signals persist over deep time: ancient co-option of bioluminescence for courtship displays in cypridinid ostracods
TLDR
The persistence of luminous courtship for hundreds of millions of years indicates that rates of speciation within the group exceeded extinction risk, allowing for the persistence of a diverse clade of signalling species and that sexual selection did not cause rapid loss of associated traits.
Experimental evidence for effects of sexual selection on condition-dependent mutation rates
TLDR
It is shown that sexual selection and the generation of new genetic variation via mutation may be entangled in an evolutionary feedback loop, offering causality to the widely observed male mutation bias and implications for the maintenance of genetic variation in fitness.
Larger offspring associated with lower temperatures across species of Microporella, a widespread colonial invertebrate
TLDR
It is found that offspring size is affected by a combination of module size and water temperature (or latitude when fossil species are included), while fecundity and levels of nutrients have a weak to no effect on this life history trait.
Sexual Dichromatism Is Decoupled from Diversification over Deep Time in Fishes
TLDR
It is shown how the effects of dichromatism on diversification are highly variable in direction and restricted to certain clades and phylogenetic scales.
Do sexually selected weapons drive diversification?
TLDR
The results suggest that precopulatory male-male competition may not have strong, general effects on speciation and diversification in insects, a group encompassing ∼60% of all described species.
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References

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TLDR
It is argued that evolutionary 'suicide' - as sometimes suggested - is unlikely in deterministic environments, except if costs are not paid by the same individual that bears the trait, and shows an example where greater mortality of males due to sexual dimorphism improves the carrying capacity of the environment, and thus presumably population viability.
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TLDR
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TLDR
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TLDR
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TLDR
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TLDR
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TLDR
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TLDR
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TLDR
It is found that sexual selection can lead to both increases and decreases in population-level fitness measures such as extinction probability and adaptation rate, and this is consistent with field studies that have mostly focussed on very small populations, and tend to find negative effects, and with laboratory studies that tend to use larger populations and have tended to find positive effects.
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TLDR
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