Koinophilia

Koinophilia is an evolutionary hypothesis proposing that during sexual selection, animals preferentially seek mates with a minimum of unusual or mutant features, including functionality, appearance and behavior. Koinophilia intends to explain the clustering of sexual organisms into species and other issues described by Darwin's Dilemma. The term derives from the Greek, koinos, "common", "that which is shared", and philia, "fondness".

Natural selection causes beneficial inherited features to become more common at the expense of their disadvantageous counterparts. The koinophilia hypothesis proposes that a sexually-reproducing animal would therefore be expected to avoid individuals with rare or unusual features, and to prefer to mate with individuals displaying a predominance of common or average features.Mutants with strange, odd or peculiar features, would be avoided because most mutations that manifest themselves as changes in appearance, functionality or behavior, are disadvantageous. Because it is impossible to judge whether a new mutation is beneficial (or might be advantageous in the unforeseeable future) or not, koinophilic animals avoid them all, at the cost of avoiding the very occasional potentially beneficial mutation. Thus, koinophilia, although not infallible in its ability to distinguish fit from unfit mates, is a good strategy when choosing a mate. A koinophilic choice ensures that offspring are likely to inherit a suite of features and attributes that have served all the members of the species well in the past.

Koinophilia differs from the "like prefers like" mating pattern of assortative mating. If like preferred like, leucistic animals (such as white peacocks) would be sexually attracted to one another, and a leucistic subspecies would come into being. Koinophilia predicts that this is unlikely because leucistic animals are attracted to the average in the same way as are all the other members of its species. Since non-leucistic animals are not attracted by leucism, few leucistic individuals find mates, and leucistic lineages will rarely form.

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