Charles Darwin: Theory of Sexual Selection

Origin of Sex-Biased Mental Disorders: An Evolutionary Perspective

“…Despite his awareness of males' often aggressive behavior during the initiation of mating through song, dance, and the pursuit of females, in his theory of sexual selection Darwin mainly focussed on male-male competition and female choice in relation to mate choice. A large body of data has been gathered on male behavior, both generally and during mating, and in light of which it has become clear that role of sexes in relation to each other involves more than mate choice (sexual selection) and should be extended to all aspects of mating behavior associated with reproduction (Markow 2002;Singh and Jagadeeshan 2018). For example, males engage in mate search, defending territory, male-male competition, courting, nuptial gifts, mating, mate guarding and sperm competition.…”

“…We are aware that, strictly speaking, some of the behaviors listed here are outside canonical sexual selection; however, our goal is not to redefine sexual selection but to extend it. We need a term that includes all aspects of mate-driven behaviors associated with mating, and we feel that male-driven and female-driven evolution describe the sexes' roles and impacts on each other's fitness better than canonical sexual selection (Bateman 1948;Singh and Jagadeeshan 2018). Male-female-driven evolution is especially relevant to human evolution as the sexes have become the most important part of each other's lifestyle, environment, and ecology.…”

“…Sex-biased developmental processes are the results of the evolutionary integration of millions of years of small modifications that have accrued differentially in males and females (Singh and Jagadeeshan 2018). For example, although the concept of equal biparental genetic material (autosome) contributions (barring mitochondria and Y) is simple to understand, parental imprinting can be difficult to explain without understanding the theory of sexual antagonism (Arnqvist and Rowe 2005;Bedhomme et al 2008) and the associated complementation of paternal and maternal genomes involving specific sets of imprinted genes under evolutionary pressure (Kaneko-Ishino et al 2006).…”