Individual and population sex allocation patterns

Abstract

A variety of sex allocation models is considered in which (i) the reproductive returns on investment in males differ from the returns on investment in females, (ii) the amounts of resources available for reproduction vary in the population, (iii) the costs of making male and female reproductive structures differ, and (iv) the conception sex ratio may be fixed and there may be an initial minimum investment per offspring. Results of these models include quantatitive predictions for both individual- and population-level sex allocation, an opportunity to study the magnitude of changes in predicted patterns as key variables change, and therefore an analysis of the robustness of Fisher's equal investment theory. One example is that Fisher's argument is extremely robust for high fecundity organisms, but, in low fecundity organisms, is sensitive to differences between the sexes in reproductive returns on investment per offspring, a situation that occurs in many vertebrates to which Fisher's theory is often applied. A second example is that individual- and population-level patterns often depend strongly on the distribution of resources available for reproduction among individuals in the population.