Working Together to Select the Best

Darwin makes a critical jump in his theory when he combines the ideas of natural selection and sexual selection. He concludes that both processes work together and need each other for success. Darwin writes, "the more vigorous and better-nourished individuals...will be ready to bread in the spring before the others." "Such early pairs would have the same advantage in rearing offspring" (262). In other words, the strongest survive and by surviving they get the best mates, winning both in natural selection and sexual selection.

It's true though, the way they work together. You can't have natural selection without some sort of sexual selection, then the species would never reproduce. And you can't have sexual selection without natural selection because sexual selection is natural selection in the sense that only those with the best genes will find the best mates and continue on the instinctive goal of perfecting the species.

The male with the best feathers, song, show will get the best females. Therefore, they will reproduce more beings with good genes and improve the population. The others with out the best feathers, songs, etc. have been naturally selected out of the population because they were sexually selected not to continue the species by not reproducing or reproducing very little. It's harsh, but it's nature and Darwin just recognized it working at a new, co-dependent level.