TY - JOUR
T1 - Sex differences in life history, behavior, and physiology along a slow-fast continuum
T2 - a meta-analysis
AU - Tarka, Maja
AU - Guenther, Anja
AU - Niemelä, Petri T.
AU - Nakagawa, Shinichi
AU - Noble, Daniel W.A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/8/1
Y1 - 2018/8/1
N2 - The pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis predicts that behavior and physiology covary with life history. Evidence for such covariation is contradictory, possibly because systematic sources of variation (e.g. sex) have been neglected. Sexes often experience different selection pressures leading to sex-specific allocation between reproduction and self-maintenance, facilitating divergence in life-history. Sex-specific differences in means and possibly variances may therefore play a key role in the POLS framework. We investigate whether sexes differ in means and variances along the fast-slow pace-of-life continuum for life history and physiological and behavioral traits. In addition, we test whether social and environmental characteristics such as breeding strategy, mating system, and study environment explain heterogeneity between the sexes. Using meta-analytic methods, we found that populations with a polygynous mating system or for studies conducted on wild populations, males had a faster pace-of-life for developmental life-history traits (e.g., growth rate), behavior, and physiology. In contrast, adult life-history traits (e.g., lifespan) were shifted towards faster pace-of-life in females, deviating from the other trait categories. Phenotypic variances were similar between the sexes across trait categories and were not affected by mating system or study environment. Breeding strategy did not influence sex differences in variances or means. We discuss our results in the light of sex-specific selection that might drive sex-specific differences in pace-of-life and ultimately POLS.
AB - The pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis predicts that behavior and physiology covary with life history. Evidence for such covariation is contradictory, possibly because systematic sources of variation (e.g. sex) have been neglected. Sexes often experience different selection pressures leading to sex-specific allocation between reproduction and self-maintenance, facilitating divergence in life-history. Sex-specific differences in means and possibly variances may therefore play a key role in the POLS framework. We investigate whether sexes differ in means and variances along the fast-slow pace-of-life continuum for life history and physiological and behavioral traits. In addition, we test whether social and environmental characteristics such as breeding strategy, mating system, and study environment explain heterogeneity between the sexes. Using meta-analytic methods, we found that populations with a polygynous mating system or for studies conducted on wild populations, males had a faster pace-of-life for developmental life-history traits (e.g., growth rate), behavior, and physiology. In contrast, adult life-history traits (e.g., lifespan) were shifted towards faster pace-of-life in females, deviating from the other trait categories. Phenotypic variances were similar between the sexes across trait categories and were not affected by mating system or study environment. Breeding strategy did not influence sex differences in variances or means. We discuss our results in the light of sex-specific selection that might drive sex-specific differences in pace-of-life and ultimately POLS.
KW - Life history
KW - Pace-of-life
KW - Pace-of-life syndrome
KW - Phenotypic variation
KW - Sexual dimorphism
KW - Sexual selection
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85045649273&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00265-018-2534-2
DO - 10.1007/s00265-018-2534-2
M3 - Review article
SN - 0340-5443
VL - 72
JO - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
JF - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
IS - 8
M1 - 132
ER -