Related papers: The expensive son hypothesis
This paper develops mathematical models describing the evolutionary dynamics of both asexually and sexually reproducing populations of diploid unicellular organisms. We consider two forms of genome organization. In one case, we assume that…
This paper develops simplified mathematical models describing the mutation-selection balance for the asexual and sexual replication pathways in {\it Saccharomyces cerevisiae}. We assume diploid genomes consisting of two chromosomes, and we…
Many life-history traits, like the age at maturity or adult longevity, are important determinants of the generation time. For instance, semelparous species whose adults reproduce once and die have shorter generation times than iteroparous…
This study explores the impact of gender differences in preferences and productivity in home production on the time allocation in married couples, particularly in relation to childcare responsibilities. Using aggregated data from Japan, we…
We study the evolution of offspring sex ratios using a game-theoretical model in which the decision to have another child depends on the sex of the previous child. Motivated by higher male infant mortality and the tendency to try again…
Suppose that females choose males based on attributes that do not signal any genetic quality that is not related to the choice itself. Can being choosy confer selective advantage in this situation? We introduce correlated strategies, which…
Wang et al. (2025) use statistics to argue that sex at birth is not a biological coin toss, by noticing that repeated patterns such as Male Male Male and Female Female Female occur in the Nurses Health Study more often than patterns like…
Low total fertility rates throughout the world have lead to concerns about economic growth, military security, international political power, environment impacts, and quality of life. Overall total fertility rates of today's societies are…
The provision of intergenerational care, via the Grandmother Hypothesis, has been implicated in the evolution of post-fertile longevity, particularly in humans. However, if grandmothering does provide fitness benefits, a key question is why…
We compare the speed with which a sexual, respectively an asexual, population is able to respond to a biased selective pressure. Our model focuses on the Weismann hypothesis that the extra variation caused by crossing-over and recombination…
The concept of fitness is central to evolution, but it quantifies only the expected number of offspring an individual will produce. The actual number of offspring is also subject to noise, arising from environmental or demographic…
A new critical effect is predicted in population dispersal. It is based on the fact that a trade-off between the advantages of mobility and the cost of mobility breaks with a significant deterioration in living conditions. The recently…
Sexual reproduction is not always synonymous with the existence of two morphologically different sexes; isogamous species produce sex cells of equal size, typically falling into multiple distinct self-incompatible classes, termed mating…
We use a two-sex partial differential equation (PDE) model based on the Grandmother Hypothesis. We build on an earlier model by Kim et al. [27] by allowing for evolution in both longevity and age at last birth, and also assuming that…
A fundamental issue discussed in evolutionary biology is the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms. Here we develop non-robust models provided in [1] and attempt to get robust models investigated how differentiation of…
Sexual selection theory models evolution of sexual signals and preferences using simple life histories. However, life-history models predict that males benefit from increasing sexual investment approaching old age, producing age-dependent…
In unicellular organisms such as bacteria and in most viruses, mutations mainly occur during reproduction. Thus, genotypes with a high birth rate should have a higher mutation rate. However, standard models of asexual adaptation such as the…
We study the association between physical appearance and family income using a novel data which has 3-dimensional body scans to mitigate the issue of reporting errors and measurement errors observed in most previous studies. We apply…
How to define and use the concept of inclusive fitness is a contentious topic in evolutionary theory. Inclusive fitness can be used to calculate selection on a focal gene, but it is also applied to whole organisms. Individuals are then…
We model a spatially detailed, two-sex population dynamics, to study the cost of ecological restoration. We assume that cost is proportional to the number of individuals introduced into a large habitat. We treat dispersal as homogeneous…