Comment on “Bateman in Nature: Predation on Offspring Reduces the Potential for Sexual Selection”
نویسندگان
چکیده
Byers and Dunn (Reports, 9 November 2012, p. 802) claimed that predation on offspring reduced the potential for sexual selection in pronghorn. We argue that the potential for sexual selection is not affected by random offspring mortality when relative reproductive success is considered and increases when measured with the opportunity for selection, a metric that describes the potential for selection.
منابع مشابه
Comment on "Bateman in nature: predation on offspring reduces the potential for sexual selection".
Byers and Dunn's (Reports, 9 November 2012, p.802) conclusion that predation constrains sexual selection is problematic for three reasons: their nonstandard calculation of Bateman slopes; their assertion that random processes do not influence reproductive success; and the statistically unjustifiable use of 6 variables to explain just 10 observations.
متن کاملQuantifying the potential for sexual dimorphism using upper limits on Bateman gradients
Sex differences in the correlation between number of offspring and number of mates likely drive much of the evolution of morphological and behavioral sexual differences. These correlations have traditionally been represented by slopes from regressions of number of offspring on number of mates (Bateman gradients). Typically the Bateman gradient is assumed to be large for males and zero for femal...
متن کاملBateman's principle is reversed in a cooperatively breeding bird.
Bateman's principle is not only used to explain sex differences in mating behaviour, but also to determine which sex has the greater opportunity for sexual selection. It predicts that the relationship between the number of mates and the number of offspring produced should be stronger for males than for females. Yet, it is unclear whether Bateman's principle holds in cooperatively breeding syste...
متن کاملDeforestation reduces nest mound size and decreases the production of sexual offspring in the wood ant Formica aquilonia
Little is known about how anthropogenic changes in nature affect reproduction in social insects such as ants. We studied the effects of clear-cutting on the production of sexual offspring and on the mound size in Formica aquilonia, using neighbouring uncut forests as controls. Nest mounds were smaller in clear-cuts, apparently because they tended to be new bud nests. The basal area of nest moun...
متن کاملSexual selection has minimal impact on effective population sizes in species with high rates of random offspring mortality: An empirical demonstration using fitness distributions.
The effective population size (N(e)) is a fundamental parameter in population genetics that influences the rate of loss of genetic diversity. Sexual selection has the potential to reduce N(e) by causing the sex-specific distributions of individuals that successfully reproduce to diverge. To empirically estimate the effect of sexual selection on N(e), we obtained fitness distributions for males ...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2013