Your Own Adaptationist Stories

        Listed here are some recently reported biological phenomena that demand an explanation. While several experts here at the A-Stories site have made attempts, we could use your help. We are sure that they can be explained by the right adaptationist story.

The challenge;
        Take any one of these interesting correlations and let your creative juices flow.

• Attraction to chocolate and cucumbers.
• A genetic advantage for smoking.
• Penguin prostitution.
• Women resistant to virtual reality.
• Snoring students and their grades.
• Sweet tooth linked to alcoholism.
• A dedicated mental module for making faces.
• Sexual dimorphism in intestinal gas concentration and volume.
• Thrill-seeking genes.
• Why are the faithful more overweight?
• Deadly anagrams.

Some pointers for spinning a good adaptationist tale;

1. The explanation should be really clever, but where possible, counterintuitive.
2. Be sure to take an extreme view of the biological process you are invoking in your explanation and do not compromise with your opposition who take the other extreme view. This will ensure many publications as the controversy festers throughout the literature in the future.
3. In human evolution, be sure to imbed your story in one of the standard stories of human origins in explaining how the phenomenon evolved. These include, but are not limited to, the Arboreal Origin, the Aquatic Ape theory, or Man-the-hunter/Woman-the-gatherer. This will help your story fit harmoniously into the fabric of ongoing theory on human origins (see Wilson, 1998 on consilience) and will ensure invitations to Evolutionary Psychology symposia.
4. Invoke sex and sexual differences as often as possible, especially when explaining human evolution. In weaving your salacious tales about gender differences, you get extra points for gratuitously sexual references (soft-porn to be sure, adaptationism is after all a family show and all successful adaptive stories will eventually be featured on PBS, TLC, and the Discovery Channel). For example Morris' causal hypothesis to explain the correlation between human female butt and breast morphology (Morris, 1987).

   "In the case of breasts, there is a comparative method. You compare 20 species and you find that only one has hemispherical buttocks and only one has hemispherical breasts, and it is the same one. Then you look at another species, the gelada baboon, and you find it has mimicry, again in the chest region, but a different pattern - the nipples have come close together to create a pseudo-genital patch. Then you look at the mandrill and see it has a red and blue face and the same colours on its genitals. Then you think: 'Why should one end of an animal be the same as another?'" from Mail & Guardian article on Desmond Morris

5. Your hypothesis should be untestable. This is easier than you think. Experiments are messy and the interpretation of results can be complicated. Why distract yourself with a lot of data. Leave experimentation to the physicians.
6. Avoid trivial pseudo-mechanisms like historical contingency, developmental constraint and chance. Remember, every detail deserves a selectionist account.
7. Avail yourself of the cachet that comes with invoking the master molecule, DNA. DNA is the blueprint that directly controls all biological phenomena and thus everything that you do. This can be emphasized by claiming that there is a discrete gene for every trait and every trait has its gene. Epistasis and pleiotropy are unnecessary complications. These concepts are designed to help mathematical populations geneticists fill their blackboards and they need not concern you here. Your genes are in charge, don't let them down.