Next steps for understanding the selective relevance of female-female competition

After decades of neglect, recent empirical on exaggerated female traits (e.g., ornaments, armaments, aggression, signals, etc.) has revived interest this widespread but poorly understood , and shown that these traits function in the context of female-female (West-Eberhard, 1983; Amundsen, 2000; Clutton-Brock, 2009; Rosvall, 2011a; Stockley and Bro-Jørgensen, 2011; Rubenstein, 2012 [Theme ]; Stockley and Campbell, 2013 [Theme issue]). However, recent reviews emphasized the applicability of sexual . social selection, rather than rigorously the role of different ecological in shaping the evolution of traits in competitive contexts (hereafter, “competitive traits”) in females. Thus, still lack a solid understanding of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms the evolution of female trait , in particular whether, how, why these mechanisms vary among , and between the sexes.