Every picture tells a story: Reconstructing the evolution of poeciliid male morphology using museum specimens

Sexually selected traits can evolve jointly with other traits.  How?  First, the optimal value of sexually selected traits will depend on the values of other traits.  Second, shared developmental pathways among traits create pleiotropic effects of genes affecting sexually selected traits.  We illustrate some evolutionary associations between sexually selected traits and other traits with interspecific comparisons among poeciliid fishes.  We digitized the body morphology of multiple species from a museum collection using a landmark-based morphometric approach and used patterns of size and geometric shape to discover how different types of traits co-evolve.