= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
DanArmak comments on When does heritable low fitness need to be explained? - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (146)
Gender can affect reproductive fitness, in a population that isn't at a stable sex ratio. For instance, if people kill most girl babies at birth because they prefer sons to daughters, then the few women who do grow up will necessarily have higher fitness than the average man - because most men won't reproduce at all.
You're correct about stable sex ratios. (It's unimportant, but your example doesn't apply to stable sex ratios as far as evolution goes.)
What do you mean?
The 50% who get killed lowers the reproductive fitness of having a girl by the exact amount that the reproductive fitness of having girls is raised by the lower percentage of them relative to men.
Or to take it from another route, the average number of children had by men and women must remain equal.
That's why I said the women who grow up have higher fitness, not all women born.
The detail of my example, that girl babies are born and then killed, is easy to modify. Imagine a drug that, when taken by a woman before sex, selectively kills XY sperm. Or a sex-selective early abortifact.
The average number of children by men and women must remain equal, but the average number of men children and woman children doesn't have to.