Dataset Information

Are human natal sex ratio differences across the world adaptive? A test of Fisher's principle.

ABSTRACT: Fisher's principle states that natural selection favours an equal number of male and female births at the population level, unless there are sex differences in rearing costs or sex differences in mortality before the end of the period of parental investment. Sex differences in rearing costs should be more pronounced in low- than in high-resource settings. We, therefore, examined whether human development index and sex differences in child mortality contribute to the natural variation in human sex ratio at birth across the globe. As predicted by Fisher's principle, the proportion of male births increased with both increasing male-biased childhood mortality and level of development of each country. However, these relationships were absent after accounting for spatial autocorrelation in the residuals, which our inference is conditioned on. This work shows how the failure to account for residual spatial autocorrelation can lead to incorrect conclusions regarding support for predictions from sex allocation theory.

SUBMITTER: Douhard M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8086949 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Are human natal sex ratio differences across the world adaptive? A test of Fisher's principle.

Douhard Mathieu M Dray Stéphane S

Biology letters 20210317 3

Fisher's principle states that natural selection favours an equal number of male and female births at the population level, unless there are sex differences in rearing costs or sex differences in mortality before the end of the period of parental investment. Sex differences in rearing costs should be more pronounced in low- than in high-resource settings. We, therefore, examined whether human development index and sex differences in child mortality contribute to the natural variation in human se ...[more]

PMID: 33726565

Similar Datasets

Project description:Finite element Human Body Models are increasingly becoming vital tools for injury assessment and are expected to play an important role in virtual vehicle safety testing. With the aim of realizing models to study sex-differences seen in the injury- and fatality-risks from epidemiology, we developed models that represent an average female and an average male. The models were developed with an objective to allow tissue-based skeletal injury assessment, and thus non-skeletal organs and joints were defined with simplified characterizations to enhance computational efficiency and robustness. The model lineup comprises female and male representations of (seated) vehicle occupants and (standing) vulnerable road users, enabling the safety assessment of broader segments of the road user population. In addition, a new workflow utilized in the model development is presented. In this workflow, one model (the seated female) served as the base model while all the other models were generated as closely-linked derivative models, differing only in terms of node coordinates and mass distribution. This approach opens new possibilities to develop and maintain further models as part of the model lineup, representing different types of road users to reflect the ongoing transitions in mobility patterns (like bicyclists and e-scooter users). In this paper, we evaluate the kinetic and kinematic responses of the occupant and standing models to blunt impacts, mainly on the torso, in different directions (front, lateral, and back). The front and lateral impacts to the thorax showed responses comparable to the experiments, while the back impact varied with the location of impact (T1 and T8). Abdomen bar impact showed a stiffer load-deflection response at higher intrusions beyond 40 mm, because of simplified representation of internal organs. The lateral shoulder impact responses were also slightly stiffer, presumably from the simplified shoulder joint definition. This paper is the first in a series describing the development and validation of the new Human Body Model lineup, VIVA+. With the inclusion of an average-sized female model as a standard model in the lineup, we seek to foster an equitable injury evaluation in future virtual safety assessments.

Dataset Information

Are human natal sex ratio differences across the world adaptive? A test of Fisher's principle.

Publications

Are human natal sex ratio differences across the world adaptive? A test of Fisher's principle.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets