(no subject)

[impossiblewizardry]

basically, if you have some evolutionary reason for expecting something, ask yourself:

• what do you know about the selection pressures during the time the trait was evolving? Do you know what would have been seelcted for, and how strongly? If it's something related to hunting, do you know how the sepcies hunted at that time? If it's something related to mating, do you know how the species mating rituals worked at that time? Not just a vague idea, but well enough to know what makes the difference in success vs failure, and what is negligible compared to other factors

• what do you know about the available genetic variation at that time? Are you sure alleles with the effect you're thinking of actually existed? Or were more common than alleles with different effect sthat responded to the same selection pressure?

Garbage in garbage out.