Could the males of a primarily monogamous alien species have antlers?
I'm designing an alien species and I want the males to have deer-like antlers. Now I also need this species to have a genetic predisposition (as in it is not just a cultural affectation) to be primarily monogamous (as their progeny require a lot of attention/effort much like human larvae).
Of course since antlers in the real world are used by stags to attract mates and "defend" (mostly symbolically as they aren't actually that useful to harm opposition) their harems from other males the two traits I want are at first glance incompatible.
There are potential solutions to this problem however. The first, probably most obvious answer is to find a utility other than that of male compitition for my creatures' antlers that is somehow exclusive to males. I really can't think of any possible usefulness that would only apply to males though.
The second resolution that I have considered would be that monogamy is a relatively recent evolutionary development in the species that I want to create and thus that the antlers are vestigial. This would of course mean however that larger antlers would gradually be selected against, quickly leading to stags without any antlers at all (there are conditions which can cause a stag to be born unable to ever grow antlers without even needing successive mutations in the real world). Approximately how long would it take for most males to not have antlers?
My main question is this: Would it be realistic for the majority of the males within a primarily monogamous species to have antlers?
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The antlers can be a signal of health, a strong immune system, etc, just like a peacock's tail. The peacock's tail is actually a drag on survivability (literally), it makes it more difficult for the peacock to escape predators (and this is observed in the wild). The same has been shown for bright colors in other male birds; it reduces camouflage compared to the female's drabber brown to black feathering: The latter evolved because color in a female is unnecessary (or vice versa).
For a peacock, we know females are attracted to larger tails and symmetric tails, and avoid males with missing feathers or lop-sided development; which may be a sign of disease or other fitness failures in escaping predators, which would reduce the likelihood of chick survival. (The females don't know that, of course, they are just genetically predisposed to attraction to large, symmetric, colorful tails).
For antlers, demand the same thing: large, symmetric, unbroken, and uniform in color and visible texture. No patchiness, no thinness. The male has to be healthy with plenty of calories to spare to carry such a rack. It does not have to be that they FIGHT with it; just like peacock's do not fight with their tails.
Even if they are an intelligent species like humans, it won't matter: Human men and women both are still very much predisposed to the physical characteristics of healthy individuals: Models are almost always very close to perfectly symmetrical in face and body; women are attracted to tall men with deeper voices, men are attracted to young fit women. Everybody prefers smooth skin that has no hint of disease. Your antler species will be the same, no matter how "intelligent" they may be, attraction is at a much more instinctive animal level in the brain than rational thought is likely to be.
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