ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2019
Sexual ornaments but not weapons trade off against testes size in primates.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolutionary Complexity of Primate Immune System Uncovered by the Extensive Phylogenomic Sampling.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Sexual selection and pseudogenization in primate fertilization.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- Monogamy removes constraints on reproductive tissue investment imposed by intense sexual selection.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The role of between-group signaling in the evolution of primate ornamentation.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Male allocation to ejaculation and mating effort imposes different life history trade-offs.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Evolutionary trade-offs between testes size and parenting in Neotropical glassfrogs.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Horn size is linked to Sertoli cell efficiency and sperm size homogeneity during sexual development in common eland (Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Article
- When less is more: coy display behaviours and the temporal dynamics of animal courtship.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Group size and mating system predict sex differences in vocal fundamental frequency in anthropoid primates.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Current advances in primate genomics: novel approaches for understanding evolution and disease.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2023Review
- Scent mark signal investment predicts fight dynamics in house mice.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The relationship between sexual dimorphism and androgen response element proliferation in primate genomes.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
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- Male morphological traits are heritable but do not predict reproductive success in a sexually-dimorphic primate.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Sexual ornaments but not weapons trade off against testes size in primates.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- No Evidence for a Trade-Off Between Competitive Traits and Ejaculate Quality in Humans.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behaviorArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Males must partition their limited reproductive investments between traits that promote access to females (sexual ornaments and weapons) and traits that enhance fertilization success, such as testes and ejaculates. Recent studies show that if the most weaponized males can monopolize access to females through contest competition, thereby reducing the risk of sperm competition, they tend to invest less in sperm production. However, how males invest in sexual ornaments relative to sperm production remains less clear. If male ornaments serve as badges of status, with high-ranking males attaining near-exclusive access to females, similar to monopolizing females through combat, their expression should also covary negatively with investment in post-mating traits. In a comparative study across primates, which exhibit considerable diversification in sexual ornamentation, male weaponry and testes size, we found relative testes size to decrease with sexual ornaments but increase with canine size. These contrasting evolutionary trajectories might be driven by differential selection, functional constraints or temporal patterns of metabolic investment between the different types of sexual traits. Importantly, however, our results indicate that the theory of relative investments between weapons and testes in the context of monopolizing females can extend to male ornaments.
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