Can diet niche partitioning enhance sexual dimorphism?

Published February 6, 2023 | Version v1

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Classic evolutionary theory suggests that sexual dimorphism evolves primarily via sexual and fecundity selection. However, theory and evidence is beginning to accumulate suggesting that resource competition can drive the evolution of sexual dimorphism, via ecological character displacement between sexes. A key prediction of this hypothesis is that the extent of ecological divergence between sexes will be associated with the extent of sexual dimorphism.
As the stable isotope ratios of animal tissues provide a quantitative measure of various aspects of ecology, we carried out a meta-analysis examining associations between the extent of isotopic divergence between sexes and the extent of body size dimorphism. Our models demonstrate that large amounts of between-study variation in isotopic (ecological) divergence between sexes is non-random and may be associated with the traits of study subjects. We therefore completed meta-regressions to examine whether the extent of isotopic divergence between sexes is associated with the extent of sexual size dimorphism.
We found modest but significantly positive associations across species between size dimorphism and ecological differences between sexes, that increased in strength when the ecological opportunity for dietary divergence between sexes was greatest.
Our results therefore provide further evidence that ecologically mediated selection, not directly related to reproduction, can contribute to the evolution of sexual dimorphism.

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Funding provided by: UK Research and Innovation
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100014013
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