ArticleBiology letters2025
The sexy and formidable male body: men's height and weight are conditfion-dependent, sexually selected traits.
Article in Biology letters, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gender equality predicts female overrepresentation only in competitive domains where they have a relative advantage over males.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- The decline in the physical stature of the U.S. population parallels the diminution in the rate of increase in life expectancy.SSM - population health · 2025Article
- The nurture of nature: why physical and psychological differences between the sexes are greater in healthier, wealthier societies.Biology letters · 2025Review
- Article
- The sexy and formidable male body: men's height and weight are conditfion-dependent, sexually selected traits.Biology letters · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
On average men are taller and more muscular than women, which confers on them advantages related to female choice and during physical competition with other men. Sexual size dimorphisms such as these come with vulnerabilities due to higher maintenance and developmental costs for the sex with the larger trait. These costs are in keeping with evolutionary theory that posits large, elaborate, sexually selected traits are signals of health and vitality because stressor exposure (e.g. early disease) will compromise them (e.g. shorter stature) more than other traits. We provide a large-scale test of this hypothesis for the human male and show that with cross-national and cross-generational improvements in living conditions, where environmental stressors recede, men's gains in height and weight are more than double those of women's, increasing sexual size dimorphism. Our study combines evolutionary biology with measures of human wellbeing, providing novel insights into how socio-ecological factors and sexual selection shape key physical traits.
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