The lek paradox is not resolved

In a population at equilibrium in a stable environment under natural selection there can be very little heritability of fitness. In some species, for example, those with leks, females exhibit strong preferences for certain characteristics in their mates, though all they obtain are his genes and these cannot contribute much to the fitness of their offspring. In paternal species, where there are often clear economic benefits in obtaining good mates, mate choice mechanisms do not seem so highly developed. This is the lek paradox. We examine three forces, mutational load, migrational load, and two kinds of linkage disequilibrium, which might generate enough heritability to maintain a mating convention in a nonpaternal species, and we evaluate the strength of the selective forces they generate. Only under rather extreme conditions can these forces be of more than negligible strength.