The Courtship Habits of the Great Crested Grebe

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ornithology from his youth. In 1911, while away from lecturing duties at the Univer- sity of Oxford, UK, he began observing the courtship of the redshank Tringa totanus in Cardigan Bay, Wales. He found that although female redshanks did not actively select a mate from among competing males, they had the power to accept or reject each

suitor — supporting part of Darwin’s theory ANDREW PARKINSON/NATUREPL.COM of sexual selection. The following April, Huxley and his brother Trevenen spent two weeks watching the courtship of great crested grebes (Podiceps cristatus). They did so at a reservoir near the Hertfordshire town of Tring, now renowned as home to the match- less bird collections of the Natural History Museum. The result was a paper published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London in 1914 and later, in slightly abbrevi- ated form, as a pocket-sized book. By the month of the brothers’ observations, the grebes had already paired. Nevertheless, male and female, whose plumages are virtu- ally identical, engaged in striking behaviours such as the “cat attitude” and the “penguin dance”, as Huxley colourfully labelled them. These he interpreted as necessary to bring the two birds into what he perceived as the emotional synchrony needed for coition, nest-building and egg-laying. To achieve this, some behaviours have undergone a gradual change from useful action to symbol to ritual. It was Huxley’s landmark paper that iden- tified this process of ritualization in animal behaviour (he organized a Royal Society symposium to discuss it in 1965). Huxley also realized that ritualization extended to mam- mals, including people. With a sprinkling of references to Dante, Plato and Shakespeare’s Great crested grebes performing head-shaking, part of their courtship ritual. Romeo and Juliet, he digresses to muse on how human courtship so often and so predictably proceeds from hand-holding to kissing to more. More formally, he realized that behav- IN RETROSPECT iours may be shaped by evolution. Darwin conceived sexual selection as hav- ing two principal components. The first, which still prevails, was that males would The Courtship Habits of compete among themselves for access to females — leading, for example, to the huge size of belligerent bull elephant seals striving to the Great Crested Grebe monopolize a stretch of breeding beach. Sec- ond, he thought that ornamentation in one sex, most often the male, might be favoured Michael Brooke reappraises Julian Huxley’s pioneering by a mating preference of the other sex. classic of animal behaviour on its centenary. Huxley found this concept more difficult because of the similar breeding plumage in both sexes of great crested grebe, and s a scion of the family that produced Decades before that, however, he helped to because courtship continues well after the ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ Thomas Henry pioneer the field of animal behaviour with birds have paired off. Huxley’s difficulties Huxley, novelist Aldous Huxley his groundbreaking work on avian ethology, barely surface in the book, although he does Aand Nobel-prizewinning biologist Andrew the 1914 Courtship Habits of the Great Crested presage the idea of runaway sexual selection, Huxley, Julian Huxley (1887–1975) seemed Grebe. In it, he demonstrated how detailed in which female preference for a male trait destined to shine. He did, notably as an archi- observations of individual birds can prompt leads to ever more extravagant male traits. tect of the mid-twentieth-century evolution- profound biological questions, and some- This latter idea was subsequently developed ary synthesis that merged Darwin’s ideas on times reveal the outline of the answers. by Ronald Fisher in The Genetical Theory of natural selection with population genetics. Huxley was keenly interested in Natural Selection (1930). But in 1938, Huxley

COSMOLOGY RICE UNIV. A few words on infinity Lucy Fortson enjoys a slim primer on cosmology that uses a cleverly constrained lexicon.

hen we think of cos- night of observation using a “Big- mology, we might Seer” (telescope), and her reflec- think of some of tions on the series of “Why? Wits most complex scientific questions” (science) that have theories, such as inflation led her, and humanity, to the or the general theory of point of understanding as relativity. Or we might much as we do about the HUBBLE HERITAGE/ESA/NASA Julian Huxley in 1914. consider its astound- “All-There-Is” (Universe). ing discoveries, such as We move from early (West- published a paper in The American Natu- the twinned mysteries of ern) cosmology that the “old ralist that effectively poured cold water dark matter and dark energy, people” believed in, centred on on any enthusiasm for female choice, and which together comprise 96% of “Crazy Stars” (planets), to the even more for mutual choice. the contents of the Universe. We The Antennae galaxies. discoveries of planets outside the There matters largely rested until the may then have the unsettling idea Solar System and today’s search early 1980s, when Malte Andersson that the remaining 4% (including the stuff for new “Home-Worlds”. We then follow showed that female choice did select for of which humanity is made) is insignificant a fairly conventional path with the usual extreme male tail length in the African in the grand scheme of things — a thought suspects, including the “student-people” widowbird (Euplectes progne). Ten years all the more remarkable when we consider Mr Hubble, Mr Einstein and Mrs Rubin, as later, Ian Jones and Fiona Hunter stud- the extent to which the bits of recycled stars Trotta brings us through discoveries from ied the crested auklet (Aethia cristatella), known as humans understand cosmology. the expansion of the Universe to Big Bang a monogamous seabird in which both The extraordinary story of the Universe nucleosynthesis — all using a total of just sexes are ornamented. The parallels with and our journey to understand it is not 707 different words (and 42 names). the great crested grebe are obvious. Jones an easy one to tell to the general public. This linguistic constriction left me and Hunter showed that both males and But because it is the story that binds us all wondering about the intended readership. females responded to accentuated mod- together, it is important to tell it in myriad At times, the exercise feels like just that, els of the opposite sex with more frequent ways to reach as many people as possible. yielding pained oversimplifications that displays — confirming that ornaments in The Edge of the Sky is an inventive, enjoy- give the impression of inaccuracy, such as both sexes could be favoured by mutual able and thought-provoking contribution “tired light” for redshift. We begin to won- mating preferences. Although beyond the to that effort. der whether Trotta embarked on the project scope of that study, it also seemed pos- Inspired by ‘Up Goer Five’ — an merely as an intellectual puzzle, proving to sible that ornament size influenced the instalment of the webcomic xkcd, by himself that he could write a satisfactory likelihood of re-pairing the following year. former NASA roboticist Randall Mun- explanation of cosmology with an arbitrary That would have further undermined roe — theoretical cosmologist Roberto constraint on vocabulary. (There are faint Huxley’s reluctance to concede a role for Trotta uses fewer than 90 pages to take the echoes here, for instance, of the French sexual selection in any display after birds reader through a strange, yet sometimes writer and filmmaker Georges Perec’s exper- have paired for the season. compelling, exercise. He translates our cur- imental 1969 novel La Disparition, which In 1946, Huxley became the first rent understanding of cosmology into the excludes the letter e.) director of the fledgling United Nations 1,000 most popular words in English (or In reading this book, do the cosmologi- Educational, Scientific and Cultural as the book would say, “the ten hundred cally uninitiated really gain a clearer under- Organization (UNESCO), and he was most-used words in our tongue”). Effec- standing of the workings of the Universe, instrumental in the 1961 founding of tively, this approach demanded the inven- and could they then explain this to someone the World Wildlife Fund, now known as tion of a new language else using ordinary terminology? Probably WWF. In the field of evolution, his over- through renaming of not. But, as with a well-told folk tale, per- whelming influence may have put a brake common objects: aer- haps some of the passion and poetry of this on the study of sexual selection, and his oplanes, for instance, ultimate quest will be conveyed, inspiring a grebe-courtship observations have largely become flying cars. It new student-person to ask the right Why? been superseded by those of zoologist Ken is as if we are reading questions. This would be no small success. ■ Simmons. But nobody has put two weeks’ a book by an observer birdwatching in the spring sunshine on a different planet. Lucy Fortson is associate professor of beside an English reservoir to greater Paradoxically, this physics at the University of Minnesota in heuristic effect. ■ simplicity of language Minneapolis, where she teaches cosmology. encourages us to think The Edge of the She is also committed to improving the Sky: All You Need Michael Brooke is Strickland Curator of outside the familiar. to Know about the scientific literacy of the general public Ornithology at the University Museum of So we follow a All-There-Is through the citizen-science project Zoology in Cambridge, UK. “student-person” (sci- ROBERTO TROTTA Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org). e-mail: [email protected] entist) through one Basic Books: 2014. e-mail: [email protected]