Monographs in Population Biology

Stuart West

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781400832019
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of theoretical and empirical studies of sex allocation, transforming how we understand the allocation of resources to male and female reproduction in vertebrates, invertebrates, protozoa, and plants. In this landmark book, Stuart West synthesizes the vast literature on sex allocation, providing the conceptual framework the field has been lacking and demonstrating how sex-allocation studies can shed light on broader questions in evolutionary and behavioral biology.
West clarifies fundamental misconceptions in the application of theory to empirical data. He examines the field's successes and failures, and describes the research areas where much important work is yet to be done. West reveals how a shared underlying theoretical framework unites findings of sex-ratio variation across a huge range of life forms, from malarial parasites and hermaphroditic worms to sex-changing fish and mammals. He shows how research on sex allocation has been central to many critical questions and controversies in evolutionary and behavioral biology, and he argues that sex-allocation research serves as a key testing ground for different theoretical approaches and can help resolve debates about social evolution, parent-offspring conflict, genomic conflict, and levels of selection.
Certain to become the defining book on the subject for the next generation of researchers, Sex Allocation explains why the study of sex allocation provides an ideal model system for advancing our understanding of the constraints on adaptation among all living things in the natural world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Sex Allocation
• 2. The Düsing-Fisher Theory of Equal Investment
• 3. Interactions between Relatives I: Cooperation and Competition
• 4. Interactions between Relatives II: Local Mate Competition
• 5. Interactions between Relatives III: Extended Local Mate Competition Theory
• 6. Conditional Sex Allocation I: Basic Scenarios
• 7. Conditional Sex Allocation II: Population Consequences and Further Complications
• 8. Sex Allocation When Generations Overlap
• 9. Conflict I: Between Individuals
• 10. Conflict II: Sex Allocation Distorters
• 11. General Issues
• References
• Index