6 Syntactic ornaments in the binary language 21 6.1 From ornaments to projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 6.2 Syntax of the binary language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 6.3 Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 6.4 Datatype environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

Exaggerated male traits that have evolved under sexual selection include ornaments to attract mates and weapons to deter rivals. Data from studies of many such traits in diverse kinds of organisms show that they almost universally exhibit positive allometries. Both ornaments and weapons increase disproportionately with overall body size, resulting in scaling exponents within species that are co...

Exaggerated cranial structures such as crests and horns, hereafter referred to collectively as ornaments, are pervasive across animal species. These structures perform vital roles in visual communication and physical interactions within and between species. Yet the origin and influence of ornamentation on speciation and ecology across macroevolutionary time scales remains poorly understood for ...

Nephrite (jade) ornaments, especially ear-ornaments, are among the most attractive artefacts in Southeast Asian archaeology. As Loofs-Wissowa stated (1980-81: 57): “Ear-ornaments in general seem to have played, and are still playing in some societies, a greater role in Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia than almost anywhere else in the world.....” Because of the beautifully wrought shapes a...

Functional programmers from all horizons strive to use, and sometimes abuse, their favorite type system in order to capture the invariants of their programs. A widely-used tool in that trade consists in defining finely-indexed datatypes. Operationally, these types classify the programmer’s data, following the ML tradition. Logically, these types enforce the program invariants in a novel manner....

Elaborate morphological ornaments can evolve if they increase the reproductive success of the bearer during competition for mates. However, ornament evolution is incredibly rare in females, and the type and intensity of selection required to develop female-specific ornamentation is poorly understood. The main goals of my thesis are to clarify the relationship between the type and intensity of s...

Why are there so few small secondary sexual characters? Theoretical models predict that sexual selection should lead to reduction as often as exaggeration, and yet we mainly associate secondary sexual ornaments with exaggerated features such as the peacock's tail. We review the literature on mate choice experiments for evidence of reduced sexual traits. This shows that reduced ornamentation is ...

Most studies of condition-dependent sexual ornaments have treated such ornaments as single traits. However, sexual ornaments are often composites of several components, each produced by partially independent developmental pathways. Depending on environmental and individual condition, components of these ornaments may reflect different behavioral or physiological properties of an individual. One...

Mate choice can lead to the evolution of sexual ornamentation. This idea rests on the assumption that individuals with more elaborate ornaments than competitors have higher reproductive success due to gaining greater control over mating decisions and resources provided by partners. Nevertheless, how the resources and quality of sexual partners that individuals gain access to are influenced by t...