title: The Trivers-Willard hypothesis: sex ratio or investment?
abstract: The Trivers-Willard hypothesis has commonly been considered to predict two things. First, that a mother in good condition should bias the sex ratio of her offspring towards males (if males exhibit greater variation in reproductive value). Second, that a mother in good condition should invest more per son than per daughter. These two predictions differ empirically, mechanistically and, as we demonstrate here, theoretically too. We construct a simple model of sex allocation that allows simultaneous analysis of both versions of the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. We show that the sex ratio version holds under very general conditions, being valid for a large class of male and female fitness functions. The investment version, on the other hand, is shown to hold only for a small subset of male and female fitness functions. Our results help to make sense of the observation that the sex ratio version is empirically more successful than the investment version.
authors.affiliation: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, MA, USA Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, MA, USA carlveller@fas.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Carl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Veller
authors.affiliation: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, MA, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Haig
authors.affiliation: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, MA, USA Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, MA, USA Department of Mathematics, Harvard University, MA, USA martin_nowak@harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Martin A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Nowak
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D056084:Genetic Fitness; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D009035:Mothers; D012098:Reproduction / Q000502:physiology; D012744:Sex Ratio
keywords: individual sex ratio; parental care; parental condition