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An often-cited theory published by R. A. Fisher in 1930 that attempts to resolve the paradox posits that such traits are the results of explosive positive feedback loops that have as their starting points particular sexual preferences for features that confer a survival advantage and thus " become established in the species.
" Fisher argued that such features advance in the direction of the preference even beyond the optimal level for survival, until the selection pressure of female choice is precisely counterbalanced by the resultant disadvantage for survival.
Fisher further argued that the strength of the female preference tends to grow exponentially ( leading to ' explosive ' evolution of the characteristic ) until finally checked by ecological selection, since the offspring of those females with the strongest preference typically fare better in reproducing than the offspring of females with weaker preferences.
Any mutations for the preference opposite to the given characteristic, though tending to promote survival against ecological selection, nevertheless tend not to survive in the gene pool because male offspring that result from matings based on the preference are less sexually attractive to the majority of the females in the population, and thus infrequently chosen as mates.
An equivalent way of expressing this is that if most females are looking, for example, for long-tailed males, then each female individually does better to select a long-tailed male, since then her male children are more likely to succeed.
( The females do not actually have this thought process ; this kind of " decision " is an evolutionarily stable strategy.

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