There are a lot of different ways to defines expensive. For example, it would be costly to put paper on board a fishing boat. Or, it would be costly to sell hydrogen produced from renewable resources.
There are other examples as well, such as measuring a metric-only tape measure against an equivalent non-metric tape measure. No matter what your definition is, Merriam-Webster is likely to have a definition that suits your needs.
Merriam-Webster Costly Defines Expensive
The evolution of cost-prohibiting cooperative traits and signals poses a fundamental challenge to evolutionary theory.
Costly signals are expected to reduce the individual fitness, and cooperative traits should diminish through natural selection. But in reality, the cost-prohibiting signals and traits may co-evolve as the population dynamics change.
This means that the evolution of these traits and signals can occur in tandem with the evolution of fitness-maximizing signals and behaviors.
The empirical studies on cost-prohibiting signalling have not been able to differentiate between the classical and hybrid costly signalling equilibria.
However, future studies may be able to distinguish between these hypotheses. Nevertheless, there is still a need for further investigation of the cost-prohibiting properties of signalling systems.
Costly signaling has also been used to explain public generosity. This is often thought to signal a person’s ability to provide benefits, but it has also been interpreted as an honest signal of cooperation.
Animals can send messages about desirable traits, such as wealth or access to resources, through costly biological displays and altruism.
A new theory of cooperative behavior argues that costly signaling helps cooperation flourish when it is combined with honest communication. The authors argue that this theory is an additional road to the evolution of cooperative strategies.
The model is based on the observation that some cooperative behaviors are costly and thus serve as a costly signal of the quality of the cooperator.
Costly signaling has been a challenge for evolutionary theory since the work of Darwin. This hypothesis grew from Zahavi’s handicap principle, and Grafen refined it by linking it to honest communication.
Although these theories differ, they are related to each other and the evolution of costly signaling in nature. This model is important to understand the evolution of human social behavior.
Costly to put onboard fishing vessels
A fishing operation relies on costs and revenues to make a profit. These costs are dependent on marketing channels, markets, and seasonal fluctuations.
Two major cost factors are capital investment and operation costs. Operation costs are further separated into labour costs and running costs. These include fuel, ice, food, and vessel costs.
It is possible to develop comprehensive estimates of total high seas fleet costs by analyzing vessel-level data such as speed, fishing tracks, and labor costs.
However, labor costs are a key source of uncertainty. In addition, data on the number of vessels in each region is often lacking.
