ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2019
Do metrics of sexual selection conform to Bateman's principles in a wind-pollinated plant?
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 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- The richness, frequency and relatedness components of mate diversity and mate portfolios.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Light and Pollination Limitation Alter Patterns of Fitness and Phenotypic Selection inEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Diagnosing confounded Bateman gradients.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- Costs of reproduction in flowering plants.The New phytologist · 2025Review
- Population density effects on gamete traits and fertilisation dynamics under varying sperm environments in mussels.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- We know very little about pollination in theEcology and evolution · 2024Review
- Sexual selection in seaweed? Testing Bateman's principles in the red algaProceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- On the function of flower number: disentangling fertility from pollinator-mediated selection.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Sexual selection on male but not female function in monoecious and dioecious populations of broadleaf arrowhead (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Rapid divergence in vegetative morphology of a wind-pollinated plant between populations at contrasting densities.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
- Enhanced leaky sex expression in response to pollen limitation in the dioecious plant Mercurialis annua.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2021Article
- Darwin's vexing contrivance: a new hypothesis for why some flowers have two kinds of anther.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Sexual selection after gamete release in broadcast spawning invertebrates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Direct and indirect selection on mate choice during pollen competition: Effects of male and female sexual traits on offspring performance following two-donor crosses.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bateman's principles posit that male fitness varies more, and relies more on mate acquisition, than female fitness. While Bateman's principles should apply to any organism producing gametes of variable sizes, their application to plants is potentially complicated by the high levels of polyandry suspected for plants, and by variation in the spatial distribution of prospective mates. Here we quantify the intensity of sexual selection by classical Bateman metrics using two common gardens of the wind-pollinated dioecious plant Mercurialis annua. Consistent with Bateman's principles, males displayed significantly positive Bateman gradients (a regression of fitness on mate number), whereas the reproductive success of females was independent of their ability to access mates. A large part of male fitness was explained by their mate number, which in turn was associated with males' abilities to disperse pollen. Our results suggest that sexual selection can act in plant species in much the same way as in many animals, increasing the number of mates through traits that promote pollen dispersal.
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