This headline delights me. The brief story is about why unusual traits may persist in an animal population. From LiveScience:
Predators detect common forms of prey more easily, the scientists figure. The majority that share a common look are always on the dinner menu, while oddballs are left to reproduce.
"Maintenance of variation is a classic paradox in evolution because both selection and drift tend to remove variation from populations," (University of Tennessee researcher Benjamin) Fitzpatrick explained today. "If one form has an advantage, such as being harder to spot, it should replace all others. Likewise, random drift [genetic change that occurs by chance] alone will eventually result in loss of all but one form when there are no fitness differences. There must therefore be some advantage that allows unusual traits to persist."
"Freaks Survive Because They Are Strange" (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)
