Good genes go fisherian

It has been a common perception of the ‘good genes’ mechanism of sexual selection that mating with males affording the most extreme sexual ornaments should benefit females by increasing the survival of their progeny. The ‘sexy son’ mechanism, however, stressed the enhanced reproduction of highly ornamented male progeny. A new model developed by Kokko et al. now shows that both mechanisms belong to the same continuum of indirect selection, but their relative weights can vary depending on the costs of mate choice.