Can sexual selection be distinguished in its genetic signals from natural selection? And those genetic signals, can they point us to which sex (it's not always the female, even though it's perhaps most of the time) was doing the selection?
I think that there may be some clues if the selected variations happens to be located in the sexual chromosomes, and perhaps, when they are not, by things such as diversity of mtDNA versus Y chromosome (but even this may be confused with differential survival by reasons of natural selection alone - can this be distinguished as well?).
Differential genetic expression may also be a clue sometimes, if the sexual divergence of the trait (rather than piggybacking in both sexes) was important (by natural or sexual selection), or if this divergence happened to piggyback in an already extant sexually dimorphic developmental pathway.
Is any of this BS/hardly conclusive/feasible? Are there other possibilities? Reading suggestions?
I think that there may be some clues if the selected variations happens to be located in the sexual chromosomes, and perhaps, when they are not, by things such as diversity of mtDNA versus Y chromosome (but even this may be confused with differential survival by reasons of natural selection alone - can this be distinguished as well?).
Differential genetic expression may also be a clue sometimes, if the sexual divergence of the trait (rather than piggybacking in both sexes) was important (by natural or sexual selection), or if this divergence happened to piggyback in an already extant sexually dimorphic developmental pathway.
Is any of this BS/hardly conclusive/feasible? Are there other possibilities? Reading suggestions?