A sense of history

Mating preferences for specific traits increase the fertility, fecundity or offspring fitness of choosy individuals. However, current fitness benefits offer an incomplete account of the relative influence of different signals on mate choice. The history of selection on sensory systems in a broader ecological context can provide many missing details. Recent innovative use of neural networks by Phelps and Ryan shows that modelling the chronological order in which past selective forces have acted predicts the actual mating preferences of túngara frogs.