Abstract
Publisher Summary Sexual conflict emerges from the different evolutionary interests of males and females over reproduction. Shorebirds have long been noted for their extreme diversity in breeding systems. The central thesis in this chapter is that sexual conflict is a powerful paradigm to understand breeding systems. It illustrates the thesis with shorebirds, which have played a central role in the development of breeding system theory. Shorebird mating systems encompass social polygyny, social polyandry, and social monogamy. The main objective of the chapter is to review how sexual conflict theory can be used to advance the understanding of the evolution of shorebird breeding systems and how the studies of shorebirds are advancing the understanding of sexual conflict theory. It also reviews the diversity of shorebirds, focusing on the distribution of mating systems and parental care, discusses the evidence for conflicts over mating optima in shorebirds,the field studies of behaviors in shorebirds that enable each sex to exploit (or coerce), the other and consider the evidence for conflict over reproductive rate and clutch size, and the possible avenues for future research, and provides the shorebird data.
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