Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39592002›Full record

ArticleBiology letters2024

Does greater variation reside in the larger sex?

Lewis G Halsey, David Giofrè, David C Geary

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Biology letters, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
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

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. 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.

Lewis G HalseySchool of Life and Health Sciences, University of Roehampton, London SW15 4JD, UK.ORCID 0000-0002-0786-7585
David GiofrèDISFOR, University of Genoa, Corso Andrea Podestà, 2, Genoa, Italy.ORCID 0000-0002-1992-6271
David C GearyDepartment of Psychological Sciences, Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211-2500, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The question of whether males or females are the more variable sex is long-standing, and yet to be fully answered. We investigate the relationships between body mass and variation across species using a phylogenetically informed analysis of the body mass of 337 species representing six mammalian orders. Within each order, we found that the larger sex is typically the more variable sex, whether male or female, and the variation-size relationship is arguably often close to unity. Thus, size may be the main or even sole driver of variability in at least some orders. Deviations from the expected 1 : 1 relationship emerged, however, in regressions of male : female mass variance against male : female mean mass, for Chiroptera and Rodentia, which both presented hyperallometric relationships suggesting that drivers over and above size influence differences in variation between the sexes. In Chiroptera, most species have larger females. The

Indexed as

Body SizeAnimalsBody WeightFemaleMaleMammalsPhylogenySex CharacteristicsSpecies Specificitygreater male variancemammalssexual selectionsexual size dimorphism

Identifiers

PMID39592002
PMCPMC11597398

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
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.