ArticleNature communications2022
Bateman gradients from first principles.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- The richness, frequency and relatedness components of mate diversity and mate portfolios.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Sexual antagonism, mating systems, and recombination suppression on sex chromosomes.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Biological Sex Is Binary and Rooted in Anisogamy.Ecology letters · 2026Review
- Diagnosing confounded Bateman gradients.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- Sex differences in DNA methylation in bats.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Costs of reproduction in flowering plants.The New phytologist · 2025Review
- A male-biased sex ratio increases the opportunity for precopulatory sexual selection but does not change the Bateman gradient.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- The correlation between anisogamy and sexual selection intensity-the broad theoretical predictions.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Anisogamy and the Darwin-Bateman paradigm.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- The logic of conventional and reversed Bateman gradients.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Mating competition among females: testing the distinction between natural and sexual selection in an insect.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Article
- High rates of male courtship in a female-ornamented pipefish.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- 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
- Metabolism as a screenwriter in the female-male coevolutionary play.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Anisogamy explains why males benefit more from additional matings.Nature communications · 2022Article
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1 author.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In 1948, Angus Bateman presented experiments and concepts that remain influential and debated in sexual selection. The Bateman gradient relates reproductive success to mate number, and Bateman presented this as the cause of intra-masculine selection. A deeper causal level was subsequently asserted: that the ultimate cause of sex differences in Bateman gradients is the sex difference in gamete numbers, an argument that remains controversial and without mathematical backup. Here I develop models showing how asymmetry in gamete numbers alone can generate steeper Bateman gradients in males. This conclusion remains when the further asymmetry of internal fertilisation is added to the model and fertilisation is efficient. Strong gamete limitation can push Bateman gradients towards equality under external fertilisation and reverse them under internal fertilisation. Thus, this study provides a mathematical formalisation of Bateman's brief verbal claim, while demonstrating that the link between gamete number and Bateman gradients is not inevitable nor trivial.
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