Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-12-2016
Keywords
Anisogamy, Mating success, parental care, Sexual dimorphism, Sexual selection, Bateman’s principles
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https:/doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500983
Abstract
Since Darwin's conception of sexual selection theory, scientists have struggled to identify the evolutionary forces underlying the pervasive differences between male and female behavior, morphology, and physiology. The Darwin-Bateman paradigm predicts that anisogamy imposes stronger sexual selection on males, which, in turn, drives the evolution of conventional sex roles in terms of female-biased parental care and male-biased sexual dimorphism. Although this paradigm forms the cornerstone of modern sexual selection theory, it still remains untested across the animal tree of life. This lack of evidence has promoted the rise of alternative hypotheses arguing that sex differences are entirely driven by environmental factors or chance. We demonstrate that, across the animal kingdom, sexual selection, as captured by standard Bateman metrics, is indeed stronger in males than in females and that it is evolutionarily tied to sex biases in parental care and sexual dimorphism. Our findings provide the first comprehensive evidence that Darwin's concept of conventional sex roles is accurate and refute recent criticism of sexual selection theory.
Rights Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Science Advances, v. 2, no. 2, art. e15000983
Scholar Commons Citation
Janicke, Tim; Häderer, Ines K.; Lajeunesse, Marc J.; and Anthes, Nils, "Darwinian Sex Roles Confirmed across the Animal Kingdom" (2016). Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications. 365.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/bin_facpub/365
