SynthesisProceedings. Biological sciences2012
Strategic female reproductive investment in response to male attractiveness in birds.
Synthesis in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Synthesis of Nature's Extravaganza: An Augmented Meta-Meta-Analysis on (Putative) Sexual Signals.Ecology letters · 2025Pooled it
- Impact of prenatal stress on offspring glucocorticoid levels: A phylogenetic meta-analysis across 14 vertebrate species.Scientific reports · 2018Pooled it
- Effectiveness of baseline corticosterone as a monitoring tool for fitness: a meta-analysis in seabirds.Oecologia · 2017Pooled it
- Direct benefits of mate choice: a meta-analysis of plumage colour and offspring feeding rates in birds.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2015Pooled it
- Sex differences in lizard escape decisions vary with latitude, but not sexual dimorphism.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2015Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Article
- Diagnosing confounded Bateman gradients.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- Sex-specific effects of dietary restriction on physiological variables in Japanese quails.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Dietary restriction reveals sex-specific expression of the mTOR pathway genes in Japanese quails.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Mothers in a cooperatively breeding bird increase investment per offspring at the pre-natal stage when they will have more help with post-natal care.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Plumage color degradation indicates reproductive effort: an experiment.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Mate genetic similarity affects mating behaviour but not maternal investment in mice.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The evolution of sex peptide: sexual conflict, cooperation, and coevolution.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Article
- A genome-wide test for paternal indirect genetic effects on lifespan inProceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- No evidence of immediate fitness benefits of within-season divorce in monogamous birds.Biology letters · 2022Review
- Female in-nest attendance predicts the number of ectoparasites in Darwin's finch species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Female differential allocation in response to extrapair offspring and social mate attractiveness.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Advanced paternal age as a risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders: a translational study.Molecular autism · 2020Article
- Evolution of sexual cooperation from sexual conflict.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Life-history theory predicts that individuals should adjust their reproductive effort according to the expected fitness returns on investment. Because sexually selected male traits should provide honest information about male genetic or phenotypic quality, females may invest more when paired with attractive males. However, there is substantial disagreement in the literature whether such differential allocation is a general pattern. Using a comparative meta-regression approach, we show that female birds generally invest more into reproduction when paired with attractive males, both in terms of egg size and number as well as food provisioning. However, whereas females of species with bi-parental care tend to primarily increase the number of eggs when paired with attractive males, females of species with female-only care produce larger, but not more, eggs. These patterns may reflect adaptive differences in female allocation strategies arising from variation in the signal content of sexually selected male traits between systems of parental care. In contrast to reproductive effort, female allocation of immune-stimulants, anti-oxidants and androgens to the egg yolk was not consistently increased when mated to attractive males, which probably reflects the context-dependent costs and benefits of those yolk compounds to females and offspring.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.