Response to Eberhard and Cordero, and Córdoba-Aguilar and Contreras-Garduño: sexual conflict and female choice

Eberhard and Cordero [ 1 ] begin with a claim that, in our recent TREE article [ 2 ], we are inconsistent in our use of an older, and new narrower definition of sexual conflict. For the former, we quoted the original views of Parker, Trivers, and Dawkins, and we stand by this usage. The ‘narrow’ definition noted by Eberhard and Cordero was not a definition at all, but rather an attempt to set recent models of sexual conflict into the broader context of sexual selection theory (direct versus indirect selection, and their signs). Córdoba-Aguilar and Contreras-Garduño [ 3 ] imply that we ignore difficulties in disentangling sexual conflict from ‘traditional models’. In fact, we were clear that the ‘boundary, if there is one, between traditional models of sexual selection and sexual conflict has not yet been carefully explored theoretically’ [ 2 ]. Yet, we believe that there is much to learn along this road, and initial forays have supported this view. Eberhard and Cordero consider this an overly optimistic viewpoint.