ReviewScience advances2016
Darwinian sex roles confirmed across the animal kingdom.
Review in Science advances, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 163 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
163 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 475 citations in OpenAlex.
- Synthesis of Nature's Extravaganza: An Augmented Meta-Meta-Analysis on (Putative) Sexual Signals.Ecology letters · 2025Pooled it
- Sex-specific inbreeding depression: A meta-analysis.Ecology letters · 2022Pooled it
- Stronger net selection on males across animals.eLife · 2021Pooled it
- The evolution of monogamy is associated with reversals from male to female bias in the survival cost of parasitism.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Pooled it
- Sex Biases in Patterns of Parental Investment.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Sexual antagonism, mating systems, and recombination suppression on sex chromosomes.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- The legacy of privilege: Social inheritance reverses sex differences in reproductive inequality in the spotted hyena.Science advances · 2026Article
- Experimental Evolution Under Biased Sex Ratios: Phenotypic and Genomic Responses in the Bulb Mite, Rhizoglyphus robini.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Biological Sex Is Binary and Rooted in Anisogamy.Ecology letters · 2026Review
- Analysis of the impact of gene evolution on reproductive effects reveals prevalent sexual and germline-soma conflicts.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Silene, a versatile model system: from sex and genome evolution to ecology and speciation.The New phytologist · 2026Review
- Asymmetric life-history trade-offs shape sex-biased longevity patterns.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Sex and breeding stage differences in neurogenomic profiles reflect hormone signaling in a socially polyandrous shorebird.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Depictions of Inter-Sexual Mate Competition in Late-Georgian England.Archives of sexual behavior · 2026Article
- Adult Sex Ratio as a Demographic Feedback Linking Mating Systems, Parental Care, and Evolution.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- The Evolution of Same-sex Sexual Behavior: Using Old Theory to Answer New Questions.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Review
- Condition-dependent success of resource-based reproductive tactics across both sexes inBehavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2026Article
- Explaining sex: contrast between social and sexual selection.Biology of sex differences · 2025Review
- Male bonobo mating strategies target female fertile windows despite noisy ovulatory signals during sexual swelling.PLoS biology · 2025Article
103 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
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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.