Chapter Five - Sexual Conflict in Nonhuman Primates

The Cost of Mating

Summary 1Classic evolutionary models interpret ageing as a cost of reproduction, but evolutionary research has thus far largely neglected the conceptual links between the evolution of ageing and a key mode of selection on male and female reproductive strategies – sexual selection and sexual conflict. 2We synthesize ideas and evidence linking sex and ageing, and make the case that a focus on this fascinating problem will ultimately lead to a more complete understanding of both the evolution of ageing and the evolution of sexual strategies. 3The primary and secondary differentiation of male and female reproductive strategies is expected to produce sex-specific optima for traits that affect longevity and ageing rate, often favouring a ‘live fast, die young’ strategy in males, relative to females, although numerous exceptions to this pattern are observed and sex-differences in ageing rate, in particular, remain poorly understood. 4Conversely, environmental factors that influence life expectancy or ageing rate can thereby determine the magnitude or even sign of sexual selection. 5Sexual conflict is expected to displace the sexes from their sex-specific life-history optima through sexually antagonistic interactions, as well as sex-specific selection on loci expressed in both sexes. 6Despite the availability of interesting and testable hypotheses linking sexual selection and ageing, relevant empirical studies are remarkably sparse, and the complex relation between sex, mortality rate and ageing remains poorly understood.

Male Violence and Sexual Intimidation in a Wild Primate Society

Decision letter: Thermal phenotypic plasticity of pre- and post-copulatory male harm buffers sexual conflict in wild Drosophila melanogaster

Editor's evaluation: Thermal phenotypic plasticity of pre- and post-copulatory male harm buffers sexual conflict in wild Drosophila melanogaster

Contents Part One: Introduction to Sexual Conflict 1. Sexual Conflict in Humans Todd K. Shackelford, Aaron T. Goetz, James R. Liddle, and Lance S. Bush 2. Sexual Conflict in Non-human Animals Joris M. Koene Part Two: Sexual Conflict prior to Mating 3. Integrating Social Exchange and Sexual Selection Theory in the Study of Mating Interactions Charles Crawford and Catherine Salmon 4. Sexual Conflict in Mating Strategies Norman P. Li, Oliver Sng, and Peter K. Jonason 5. Intimate Partner Violence and Life History Strategy Aurelio Jose Figueredo, Paul Robert Gladden, and Connie J. A. Beck 6. Sexual Conflict and Sexual Coercion in Comparative Evolutionary Perspective Melissa Emery Thompson and Louis C. Alvarado 7. Romantic Jealousy and Sexual Conflict Achim Schutzwohl 8. When Intersexual Conflict Leads to Intrasexual Competition: The Reproductive Suppression Hypothesis Catherine Salmon and Charles Crawford 9. It's Not All Conflict: Relationship Maintenance Psychology Jennifer Leo, Saul L. Miller, and Jon K. Maner Part Three: Sexual Conflict during Mating 10. Sexual Conflict and the Ovulatory Cycle Benedict C. Jones, Lisa M. DeBruine, Anthony C. Little, and David R. Feinberg 11. Is Female Orgasm a Covert Mate Choice Mechanism? David A. Puts and Khytam Dawood 12. Sperm Competition and Sexual Conflict William F. McKibbin 13. Sexual Conflict, Infidelity, and Vaginal/Semen Chemistry Gordon G. Gallup, Jr., Rebecca L. Burch, and Loni R. Petricone 14. Sexual Motivation in Mateships and Sexual Conflict Dietrich Klusmann and Wolfgang Berner 15. Sexual Conflict and Partner Rape Joseph A. Camilleri and Vernon L. Quinsey 16. Sexual Conflict in Mateships: From Mate-Retention to Murder Farnaz Kaighobadi, Todd K. Shackelford, and Aaron T. Goetz Part Four: Sexual Conflict after Conception 17. Sexual Conflict and the Operational Sex Ratio Daniel J. Kruger and Carey J. Fitzgerald 18. Sexual Conflict and Paternal Resemblance: Insight from Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience Steven M. Platek and J. Ryan Porter 19. Deadbeat Dads: Evolutionary Perspectives on Providing Child Support Todd K. Shackelford, Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford, David P. Schmitt, and Catherine Salmon 20. Mate Expulsion and Sexual Conflict T. Joel Wade Part Five: Conclusion 21. Spheres of Sexual Conflict Gregory Gorelik and Todd K. Shackelford

Background: Violence or sexual harassment have been increasingly reported in recent years, especially among women. Not only at the global level, but also nationally and locally. Violence in the form of sexual harassment and rape can cause deep trauma to the victim, depression, and other mental disorders. Methods: A case study of sexual harassment that causes post-traumatic stress disorder. Results and discussion: an 18-year-old woman, still in high school, complained of fear after experiencing several times of violence or sexual harassment by both close people and strangers. With a multiaxial approach, the victim is diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was confirmed that the victim had severe depression using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale or extreme depression using the Beck Depression Inventory. In this case, several factors were identified such as: being a victim or previous sexual act, conflict, and violence in the family, emotionally unsupportive family environment, poor parent-child relationships, and poverty. Comprehensive management involves a multidisciplinary approach. Pharmacologically, Risperidone was given 1-milligram tablet every 24 hours orally in the morning, and Sertraline 25 milligrams tablet every 24 hours orally at night. Victims also receive psychotherapy, education, and social support. Furthermore, the victim is monitored regularly. Conclusion: Sexual violence or harassment is prone to cause Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so it requires a multidisciplinary approach and comprehensive management. Starting from taking a history to confirm the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring.

Action-Oriented Responses to Sexual Harassment in Egypt

Sexual harassment is a common outcome of sexual conflict over mating rate. A large number of studies have identified several direct costs to females of sexual harassment including energy expenditure and reduced foraging ability. However, the fitness consequences of sexual harassment for descendants have rarely been investigated. Here, we manipulated the level of sexual harassment and mating rate in two groups of female guppies, Poecilia reticulata, a live-bearing fish in which sexual conflict over mating rate is particularly pronounced. Each female was allowed to interact with three males for one day (low sexual harassment, LSH) or for eight days (high sexual harassment, HSH) during each breeding cycle throughout their life. Female lifetime fecundity did not differ between the groups, but we found a strong effect on offspring fitness. HSH females produced (1) daughters with smaller bodies and (2) sons with shorter gonopodia, which were less attractive to females and less successful in coercive matings than their LSH counterparts. Although these results may be influenced by the indirect effects of sex ratio differences between treatments, they suggest that sexual harassment and elevated mating rate can have negative cross-generational fitness effects and more profound evolutionary consequences than currently thought.

Forced copulation is a male reproductive strategy in a variety of animals but rare among avian species, with the notable exceptions of waterfowl (family Anatidae) and at least 1 passerine species, the New Zealand stitchbird or hihi Notiomystis cincta. The presence of forced extrapair copulation in these species challenges the perception that females control extrapair copulations (EPC) across avian species. A noteworthy behavioral discrepancy is believed to exist between waterfowl and passerines in that female waterfowl are widely assumed to always resist EPC, whereas female passerines often pursue EPC. This difference in female behavior between avian groups is perplexing in light of the fact that unconditional resistance to EPC exposes female waterfowl to risk of serious injury. I consider 5 hypotheses to explain the female unconditional resistance strategy in waterfowl and focus on the controversial idea that resistance could represent a female mate choice strategy in a system dominated by male force. This resistance as mate choice hypothesis relies on indirect benefits to females through biasing paternity in favor of manipulative or genetically high-quality males and predicts that unconditional resistance versus conditional acceptance of EPC reflects the presence or absence of forced copulation in the mating system. Although indirect selection is widely regarded as unimportant in the evolution of female defensive traits when direct costs are large, I argue that indirect selection could nonetheless play an important role in the evolution of female strategies under sexual conflict. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

Male–male competition and female mate choice act contemporaneously in the cockroach Nauphoeta cinerea and the social pheromone of males influences the outcome of both forms of sexual selection. We therefore examined the joint and separate effects of male–male competition and female mate choice to determine if the selective optima for the pheromone were the same or different. Dominant males in a newly established hierarchy mated more frequently, but not exclusively. Manipulations of the multi-component social pheromone produced by males of N. cinerea showed that both long- and close-range attraction of females by males were influenced by the quantity and composition of the pheromone. The most attractive composition, however, differed from that which was most likely to confer high status to males. Since the outcome of male–male competition can conflict with mating preferences exhibited by females, there is balancing sexual selection on the social pheromone of N. cinerea. Such balancing selection might act to maintain genetic variation in sexually selected traits. We suggest that the different forms of sexual selection conflict in N. cinerea because females prefer a blend different to that which is most effective in male–male competition in order to avoid mating with overly aggressive males.

In The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin (1871) defined sexual selection as the process by which sexually dimorphic traits, which are advantageous to acquiring mates, evolved either by increasing competitive abilities against rivals (intrasexual selection) or by enhancing attractiveness to mates (intersexual selection). He further noted that in polygynous species the higher proportion of males to females would favor sexual selection, thus suggesting a relationship between mating systems and sexual selection – a point that received great attention from biologists with the flourishing of behavioral ecology (see Clutton-Brock 2004 for a historical view). The prevalence of competition among males for females, with consequent polygyny, has been attributed to differences between the sexes in parental investment, particularly in regard to the production of gametes, in that females are thought to provide a greater investment (Parker, Baker and Smith 1972; Trivers 1972). Traditionally, sexual dimorphism in primates has been regarded as a product of intrasexual competition among males (Plavcan 2004), and in spite of more recent studies attempting to investigate the role of intersexual selection, evidence of direct female choice in primates remains scant (Kappeler and van Schaik 2004). However, a third component of sexual selection, “intersexual or sexual conflict”, has recently been recognized as a strong selective force operating on both male and female reproductive strategies (Kappeler and van Schaik 2004). Sexual conflict can be defined as “the differences in the evolutionary interests between males and females” (Parker 1979). Although this concept was present in Triver’s (1972) discussion of sexual selection, the first assessment of sexual conflict derived mainly from studies on insect reproduction while trying to identify the ultimate factors responsible for the phenomenon of male-induced harm to their mates (Parker 1979; see Rice 2000).

When females are inseminated by more than one male (polyandry) sexual selection continues after insemination in the form of sperm competition and cryptic female choice. The sexually-selected sperm hypothesis proposes that, under the risk of sperm competition, additive variation in male traits determining fertilising efficiency will select for female propensity to be polyandrous in order to increase the probability of producing sons with superior fertilising efficiency. Two factors complicate this prediction: sex-biased transmission of male fertilising efficiency traits and sexual antagonism of sex-limited traits, fostered by sex-biased inheritance. Here, we (i) review the evidence that male traits contributing towards fertilising efficiency are heritable through sex-biased mechanisms, and (ii) explore the evolutionary implications for male and female reproductive strategies caused by both sex-biased transmission and sexual antagonism of fertilising efficiency traits. Many male fertilising efficiency traits are heritable through sex-biased mechanisms and may not necessarily increase female fitness. The predictions of the sexually-selected sperm hypothesis change dramatically under these different mechanisms of inheritance of fertilising efficiency traits, and different fitness pay-offs derived by females from the expression of such traits. Both sex-biased control of fertilising efficiency and sexual antagonism may also be important in explaining the maintenance of the genetic variance and selection potential of fertilising efficiency. We propose that a useful approach to test the sexually-selected sperm hypothesis is to combine studies which identify behavioural and physiological mechanisms explaining variation in reproductive success with artificial selection experiments to infer the underlying evolutionary patterns.

The evolution of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase values in acute phase of myocardial infarction (MI)

Next article No AccessHow Important Is Sexual Conflict?David Hosken and Rhonda SnookDavid Hosken Search for more articles by this author and Rhonda Snook Search for more articles by this author 1. Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter in Cornwall, Tremough, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9EZ, United Kingdom;2. Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, Alfred Denny Building, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, United KingdomPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The American Naturalist Volume 165, Number S5May 2005HOW IMPORTANT IS SEXUAL CONFLICT?A Special Issue Edited by David Hosken and Rhonda Snook Published for The American Society of Naturalists Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/429355 Views: 112Total views on this site Citations: 25Citations are reported from Crossref © 2005 by The University of Chicago.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Marcus Lee, Carlota Solano Udina, Lars-Anders Hansson Fear of sex: sexual conflict exposed as avoidance in a parthenogenetic invertebrate, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 75, no.88 (Jul 2021).https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-021-03054-9David J. Hosken, C. 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