Pietro Pollo, Malgorzata Lagisz , Renato Chaves Macedo-Rego, Ayumi Mizuno , Yefeng Yang, Shinichi Nakagawa

Why have conspicuous characteristics evolved? Our augmented meta-meta-analysis of 41 meta-analyses, encompassing 375 animal species and 7,428 individual effect sizes, shows that the conspicuousness of (putative) sexual signals is positively related to attractiveness and benefits to mates, as well as to the fitness, condition, and other traits (e.g. body size) of their bearers. These patterns are often consistent across taxa and seen in both sexes with a similar magnitude. Further, the strength of sexual selection on conspicuousness is positively associated with the relationship between conspicuousness and both benefits and individual condition, but not with other traits. Our study unifies several decades of knowledge on conspicuous traits, provides new insights about them, and lays a clear path for the future of this topic.