Supplementary material from "The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected"
Once thought to be the magical horn of a unicorn, narwhal tusks are one of the most charismatic structures in biology. Despite years of speculation, little is known about the tusk's function, because narwhals spend most of their lives hidden unearth the Arctic ice. Some hypotheses propose that...
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ftdatacite:10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4880298 2023-05-15T15:05:20+02:00 Supplementary material from "The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected" Graham, Zackary A. Garde, Eva Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter Palaoro, Alexandre V. 2020 https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4880298 https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_The_longer_the_better_evidence_that_narwhal_tusks_are_sexually_selected_/4880298 unknown The Royal Society https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0950 CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 CC-BY Evolutionary Biology FOS Biological sciences Ecology 60801 Animal Behaviour Collection article 2020 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4880298 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0950 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z Once thought to be the magical horn of a unicorn, narwhal tusks are one of the most charismatic structures in biology. Despite years of speculation, little is known about the tusk's function, because narwhals spend most of their lives hidden unearth the Arctic ice. Some hypotheses propose that the tusk has sexual functions as a weapon or as a signal. By contrast, other hypotheses propose that the tusk functions as an environmental sensor. Since assessing the tusks function in nature is difficult, we can use the morphological relationships of tusk size with body size to understand this mysterious trait. To do so, we collected morphology data on 245 adult male narwhals over the course of 35 years. Based on the disproportional growth and large variation in tusk length we found, we provide the best evidence to date that narwhal tusks are indeed sexually selected. By combining our results on tusk scaling with known material properties of the tusk, we suggest that the narwhal tusk is a sexually selected signal that is used during male–male contests. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic narwhal* DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Arctic The Tusk ENVELOPE(-168.250,-168.250,-84.867,-84.867) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Evolutionary Biology FOS Biological sciences Ecology 60801 Animal Behaviour |
spellingShingle |
Evolutionary Biology FOS Biological sciences Ecology 60801 Animal Behaviour Graham, Zackary A. Garde, Eva Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter Palaoro, Alexandre V. Supplementary material from "The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected" |
topic_facet |
Evolutionary Biology FOS Biological sciences Ecology 60801 Animal Behaviour |
description |
Once thought to be the magical horn of a unicorn, narwhal tusks are one of the most charismatic structures in biology. Despite years of speculation, little is known about the tusk's function, because narwhals spend most of their lives hidden unearth the Arctic ice. Some hypotheses propose that the tusk has sexual functions as a weapon or as a signal. By contrast, other hypotheses propose that the tusk functions as an environmental sensor. Since assessing the tusks function in nature is difficult, we can use the morphological relationships of tusk size with body size to understand this mysterious trait. To do so, we collected morphology data on 245 adult male narwhals over the course of 35 years. Based on the disproportional growth and large variation in tusk length we found, we provide the best evidence to date that narwhal tusks are indeed sexually selected. By combining our results on tusk scaling with known material properties of the tusk, we suggest that the narwhal tusk is a sexually selected signal that is used during male–male contests. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Graham, Zackary A. Garde, Eva Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter Palaoro, Alexandre V. |
author_facet |
Graham, Zackary A. Garde, Eva Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter Palaoro, Alexandre V. |
author_sort |
Graham, Zackary A. |
title |
Supplementary material from "The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected" |
title_short |
Supplementary material from "The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected" |
title_full |
Supplementary material from "The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected" |
title_fullStr |
Supplementary material from "The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected" |
title_full_unstemmed |
Supplementary material from "The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected" |
title_sort |
supplementary material from "the longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected" |
publisher |
The Royal Society |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4880298 https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_The_longer_the_better_evidence_that_narwhal_tusks_are_sexually_selected_/4880298 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-168.250,-168.250,-84.867,-84.867) |
geographic |
Arctic The Tusk |
geographic_facet |
Arctic The Tusk |
genre |
Arctic narwhal* |
genre_facet |
Arctic narwhal* |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0950 |
op_rights |
CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4880298 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0950 |
_version_ |
1766337051721990144 |