Seasonal sex ratio and unbalanced investment sex ratio in the Banksia bee Hylaeus alcyoneus

Sex Ratio Elasticity Influences the Selection of Sex Ratio Strategy

There are three sex ratio strategies (SRS) in nature-male-biased sex ratio, female-biased sex ratio and, equal sex ratio. It was R. A. Fisher who first explained why most species in nature display a sex ratio of ½. Consequent SRS theories such as Hamilton's local mate competition (LMC) and Clark's local resource competition (LRC) separately explained the observed deviations from the seemingly u...

The Trivers-Willard hypothesis: sex ratio or investment?

The Trivers-Willard hypothesis has commonly been considered to predict two things. First, that a mother in good condition should bias the sex ratio of her offspring towards males (if males exhibit greater variation in reproductive value). Second, that a mother in good condition should invest more per son than per daughter. These two predictions differ empirically, mechanistically and, as we dem...

Sex-ratio evolution in sex changing animals.

Sex allocation theory is often able to make clear predictions about when individuals should facultatively adjust their offspring sex ratio (proportion male) in response to local conditions, but not the consequences for the overall population sex ratio. A notable exception to this is in sex changing organisms, where theory predicts that: (1) organisms should have a sex ratio biased toward the "f...

Sexuality: Sex Ratio and Sex Expression

Sex ratio, sex change, and natural selection.

We describe the analogy between the theory of natural selection on sex ratio in newborn gonochores (which will not change sex), and on the age of sex change in sequential hermaphrodites (which are all born into one sex and change to the other later on). We also discuss the conditions under which natural selection favors sequential hermaphrodites over gonochores and vice versa. We show that, in ...