Abstract
Gene-centered explanations of (a) how traits develop in individuals and (b) why traits evolve by natural selection have led to a view of the sexes that is equally deterministic and inflexible. Biologists now recognize that “nature” versus “nurture” is a false dichotomy, and similarly, feminist biologists have debunked many stereotyped views of sex by shedding light on the vast amount of variation in sex, sex determination, sex hormones, primary and secondary sex traits, and sex roles. However, while biologists have begun to move past gene-centric views of evolution, response to deterministic views of the evolution of sex and gender has been less pronounced. Furthermore, the idea that the sexes act in such a way as to get their genes into the next generation has led some scientists and many media outlets to paint a picture of a human nature where evolution has shaped promiscuous, sex-hungry males and coy, resource-vying females. Can the new tools that have challenged the gene-centric view of evolution also apply to evolution of sex and gender? In this article I will take on this question and outline how a perspective encompassing adaptive flexibility provides a nuanced and less deterministic view of sexual selection in nonhuman organisms and humans.
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Notes
- 1.
This may sound familiar. The idea of environmental versus genetic determination of traits is essentially nurture versus nature. However, to say that a trait is either one or the other is entirely wrong (all traits are a mixture of the two), and as such that language is misleading. A more apt view is nature is nurture. Throughout the article, I mention examples of traits that are more environmentally determined than others, but no trait is entirely so.
- 2.
Though the focus of this article is about how new ways of thinking among scientists challenge narrow views of the sexes, it is worth nothing that not all scientists adhere to such views. Many scientists still fail to take into account variation among males and females, and many scientists are reluctant to discuss evolution without assuming changes in genes. Furthermore, in a self-perpetuating way, societal assumptions of the way that the sexes should behave can (unconsciously) shape the research programs that look to study such behavior. Nevertheless, much change in scientific views about the sexes has occurred in the last several decades, and this change is bound to continue.
- 3.
Mate preferences are often self-referential. By that I mean that the preferred mate for one individual may not be optimal, in terms of producing viable offspring, for another individual. In the context of the experiments on compensation, individuals mated to non-preferred mates compensated by either laying bigger or larger eggs, ejaculating more sperm, or providing more parental care.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to R. Bowen, E. Padgett, and M. Ah-King for several interesting conversations that led to this article. Thanks also to R. Bowen, A. Lau, M. Ah-King, A. Lee, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript. The author received funding from an NSF Pre-doctoral Fellowship while writing this article.
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Glossary
- Biological determinism
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is the idea that any trait can be traced to either a single underlying gene or network of genes and that variation in such genes is the only target of natural selection.
- Genetic accommodation
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is an evolutionary process resulting from natural selection modifying the relative importance of environmental and/or genetic input to the production of a trait. Sometimes this results from an increase in genetic control of a trait, while other times this results from a decrease in genetic control of a trait.
- Mechanisms of heredity
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are ways in which traits are passed from parents to their offspring. Genes are one mechanism of heredity, but other, not genetic mechanisms include genomic imprinting and social behavior.
- Natural selection
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is a process that results in evolution wherein individuals with some trait variant survive more and/or leave more offspring than individuals with a different trait variant.
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Drury, J.P. (2013). Sex, Gender, and Evolution Beyond Genes. In: Ah-King, M. (eds) Challenging Popular Myths of Sex, Gender and Biology. Crossroads of Knowledge, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01979-6_5
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