The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. IDarwin, Charles
Science
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. I
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology); Human beings -- Origin; Sex differences; Sexual dimorphism (Animals); Sexual selection in animals
We thus see that the musical apparatus is more differentiated or
specialised in the Locustidæ, which includes I believe the most powerful
performers in the Order, than in the Achetidæ, in which both wing-covers
have the same structure and the same function.[461] Landois, however,
detected in one of the Locustidæ, namely in Decticus, a short and narrow
row of small teeth, mere rudiments, on the inferior surface of the
right wing-cover, which underlies the other and is never used as the
bow. I observed the same rudimentary structure on the under side of the
right wing-cover in _Phasgonura viridissima_. Hence we may with
confidence infer that the Locustidæ are descended from a form, in which,
as in the existing Achetidæ, both wing-covers had serrated nervures on
the under surface, and could be indifferently used as the bow; but that
in the Locustidæ the two wing-covers gradually became differentiated and
perfected, on the principle of the division of labour, the one to act
exclusively as the bow and the other as the fiddle. By what steps the
more simple apparatus in the Achetidæ originated, we do not know, but it
is probable that the basal portions of the wing-covers overlapped each
other formerly as at present, and that the friction of the nervures
produced a grating sound, as I find is now the case with the wing-covers
of the females.[462] A grating sound thus occasionally and accidentally
made by the males, if it served them ever so little as a love-call to
the females, might readily have been intensified through sexual
selection by fitting variations in the roughness of the nervures having
been continually preserved.
[Illustration: Fig. 13, Hind-leg of Stenobothrus pratorum: _r_, the
stridulating ridge; lower figure, the teeth, forming the ridge, much
magnified (from Landois).]
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