This book is fairly short and is mostly about sexual selection and sexual antagonism. While other EP lit. uses animal examples, this book is literally full of them. Lots of interesting comparisons with all kinds of birds, for instance. On the continuum of biology — psychology of EP lit., this one is definitely closer to biology.<\/p>\n
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One annoying thing about it is that it doesnt use citations in the text. The ref list has the sources, but there are no numbers or the like in the text. This makes looking up references annoying.<\/p>\n
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https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/764783.The_Myth_of_Monogamy<\/p>\n
http:\/\/gen.lib.rus.ec\/book\/index.php?md5=A8CB31B2CAC0C427C1E0D4DC89AAD12F&open=0<\/p>\n
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Certain insects have had an important historical role in helping us appre\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n ciate the rarity of monogamy. Thus, some time ago, environmentalists had <\/span><\/p>\n great hope for a novel technique that promised to eradicate insect pests. The <\/span><\/p>\n idea was to release large numbers of sterilized males, which would mate <\/span><\/p>\n with females, who would therefore fail to reproduce. Eventually, no more <\/span><\/p>\n pests … and no more pesticides, to .boot. But the success of this procedure <\/span><\/p>\n n,ever extended beyond one species, the screw-worm fly. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is what happened. During the 1930s, E. F. Knipling, a forward\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n looking entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, may have <\/span><\/p>\n sensed that “natural” (that is, noninsecticidal) means of controlling <\/span><\/p>\n unwanted insects would be superior to the widespread use of poisons. In any <\/span><\/p>\n event, he began exploring a promising technique: Introduce sterilized male . <\/span><\/p>\n screw-worms into nature, whereupon they would mate with wild female <\/span><\/p>\n screw-worms, whose offspring would fail to materialize. It worked, becom\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n ing for a time one of the great success stories of post-Rachel Carson envi\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n ronmentalism. By the 1960s, male screw-worms were being exposed to <\/span><\/p>\n radioactive cobalt by the vatful, after which insect eunuchs were airdropped <\/span><\/p>\n over a vast region along the Mexican-U.S. border . This technique succeeded <\/span><\/p>\n in eliminating the screw-worm scourge. However , such an outcome has <\/span><\/p>\n never been replicated. As it turns out, Knipling’s choice of a target species <\/span><\/p>\n was fortunate (or scientifically inspired): Female screw-worms–despite <\/span><\/p>\n their name-are strictly monogamous. By contrast, we now know that for <\/span><\/p>\n nearly all insects, one screw is not enough: Females commonly mate with <\/span><\/p>\n more than one male, so even when they are inundated with a blizzard of <\/span><\/p>\n sterile males, it only takes a small number of intact ones for reproduction to <\/span><\/p>\n go merrily along. And so the “sterile-male technique,” for all its environ\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n mental, nonpesticide appeal, has gone nowhere. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n See more here: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sterile_insect_technique<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is a great way for rich countries to help poor countries without using alot of money on developmental aid<\/a> that doesnt work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sperm competition was actually first documented by none other than <\/span><\/p>\n Charles Darwin, although he did not identify it as such. Indeed, Darwin <\/span><\/p>\n seems to have carefully refrained from pursuing the matter , perhaps because <\/span><\/p>\n the question of females mating with more than one male was more than <\/span><\/p>\n Darwin’s social climate could bear . Thus, in The Descent of Man and Selec\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n tion in Relation to Sex (1871), Darwin described a female domestic goose <\/span><\/p>\n who produced a mixed brood consisting of some goslings fathered -by a <\/span><\/p>\n domestic goose who was her social partner as well as others evidently <\/span><\/p>\n fathered by a Chinese goose … this second male being not only not her <\/span><\/p>\n mate, but also not even of the same species! <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Humans are not the only species to have \u201dsex with animals\u201d. :)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is said that exceptions prove the rule. When it comes to the connection <\/span><\/p>\n among maleness, low parental investment, and sexual eagerness, there <\/span><\/p>\n are in fact some interesting apparent exceptions. These are cases of <\/span><\/p>\n “reversed sex roles\/’ in which females are comparatively aggressive, often <\/span><\/p>\n larger, brightly colored, and more sexually demanding if not promiscuous, <\/span><\/p>\n while the males are coy, drab, and sexually reticent. Among certain insects, <\/span><\/p>\n for example, the males produce not only sperm but also a large mass of <\/span><\/p>\n gelatinous, proteinaceous glop, which the female devours after mating; in <\/span><\/p>\n doing so, she gains substantial calories, more, in some cases, than she ex\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n pends in making eggs. And sure enough, in these speCies (including some <\/span><\/p>\n katydids and butterflies), females court the males. This makes sense, since <\/span><\/p>\n here it is the males, not the females, who make a large metabolic investment. <\/span><\/p>\n And in such cases, males, not females, are likely to say “no.” The key for <\/span><\/p>\n our purposes-and apparently for these animals as well-is that male\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n female patterns of sexual behavior are reversed precisely when male-female <\/span><\/p>\n patterns of parental investment are reversed. (It is not known, incidentally, <\/span><\/p>\n what gave rise to such sex-role switching in the first place.) <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Exceptions prove the rule becus exceptions are exceptions to what exactly? The rule.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This frase is however confusingly used now a days. An exception to a supposedly exception free rule does ofc not prove it. It disproves it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Exception_that_proves_the_rule<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n –<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The suggestion has been made that multiple mating by females may be <\/span><\/p>\n tactic of nonhuman primates as well, designed to deprive other females of <\/span><\/p>\n sperm from their sexual partner . After all, even though sperm are cheap, <\/span><\/p>\n they are not infinitely replaceable, and even the “studliest” of males may <\/span><\/p>\n have difficulty producing a constant and undiminished supply . It is even <\/span><\/p>\n possible that something akin to female-female competition for male sex\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n ual attention explains an interesting womanly mystery: menstrual syn\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n chrony . It is a well-known fact that when women live together-in dor\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n mitories, sororities, rooming houses-their menstrual cycles tend to <\/span><\/p>\n become synchronized. Young women typically begin the academic year <\/span><\/p>\n with their periods randomly distributed throughout the calendar , but by <\/span><\/p>\n finals in May or June, nearly everyone in the same domicile is reaching for <\/span><\/p>\n tampons on the same days.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Minus points for calling things well known that are actually doubtful.<\/p>\n https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Menstrual_synchrony#2000s<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n –<\/p>\n <\/p>\n IPCs are pretty much evenly divided throughout a woman’s reproduc\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n tive cycle, if anything somewhat more frequent during the postovulation <\/span><\/p>\n phase, when fertility is substantially reduced. By contrast, Baker and Bel\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n lis report that EPCs are actually more frequent when women are most fer\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n tile ! According to the two researchers, “at some time in their lives the <\/span><\/p>\n majority of males in western societies place their sperm in competition <\/span><\/p>\n with sperm from another male and the majority of females contain live <\/span><\/p>\n sperm from two or more different males .” They estimate that in Great <\/span><\/p>\n Britain 4 to 12 percent of children are conceived by “sperm that has pre\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n vailed in competition with sperm from another male. ” This is consistent <\/span><\/p>\n with standard estimates of “paternal discrepancy” among human beings <\/span><\/p>\n generally: about 10 percent, which, if accurate, is enough to bespeak gen\u00ad<\/span><\/p>\n uine sperm competition. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n These 10% estimates are wildly off the mark. See: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Misattributed_paternity#Incidence<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gilding, M. (2009). “Paternity Uncertainty and Evolutionary Psychology: How a Seemingly Capricious Occurrence Fails to Follow Laws of Greater Generality”. Sociology<\/em> 43<\/strong>: 140\u2013691. doi<\/a>:10.1177\/0038038508099102<\/a>. edit<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n –<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This book is fairly short and is mostly about sexual selection and sexual antagonism. While other EP lit. uses animal examples, this book is literally full of them. Lots of interesting comparisons with all kinds of birds, for instance. On the continuum of biology — psychology of EP lit., this one is definitely closer to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1746,1624],"tags":[2009],"class_list":["post-4127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolutionary-biology","category-evolutionary-psychology","tag-monogamy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4128,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions\/4128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}