Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38472185›Full record

ArticleNature communications2024

New estimates indicate that males are not larger than females in most mammal species.

Kaia J Tombak, Severine B S W Hex, Daniel I Rubenstein

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
23citing papers in PubMed
40.1field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

23 citing papers in PubMed, 41 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Female Affiliation and Status in Semi-Free-Ranging Chimpanzees.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026
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  8. Sexual selection and pseudogenization in primate fertilization.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Review
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Drivers of female power in bonobos.Communications biology · 2025
    Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Tracking the Morphological Trends inLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025
    Article
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Kaia J TombakDepartment of Anthropology, Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, USA. ktombak@alumni.princeton.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-7339-742X
Severine B S W HexDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-9142-6917
Daniel I RubensteinDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-9049-5219
Princeton University · USCity University of New York · US

Funding

National Science Foundation (NSF) CNS-025214National Science Foundation (NSF) IBN-9874523National Science Foundation (NSF) IOB-9874523Simons Foundation 638529
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Sexual size dimorphism has motivated a large body of research on mammalian mating strategies and sexual selection. Despite some contrary evidence, the narrative that larger males are the norm in mammals-upheld since Darwin's Descent of Man-still dominates today, supported by meta-analyses that use coarse measures of dimorphism and taxonomically-biased sampling. With newly-available datasets and primary sources reporting sex-segregated means and variances in adult body mass, we estimate statistically-determined rates of sexual size dimorphism in mammals, sampling taxa by their species richness at the family level. Our analyses of wild, non-provisioned populations representing >400 species indicate that although males tend to be larger than females when dimorphism occurs, males are not larger in most mammal species, suggesting a need to revisit other assumptions in sexual selection research.

Indexed as

MammalsReproductionAnimalsBody SizeFemaleHumansMaleSex Characteristics

Identifiers

PMID38472185
PMCPMC10933400
OpenAlexW4392697319

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.