Thrilled to see @TimJanicke 's and my paper published in Biol Lett (@RSocPublishing) . We conducted a #metaanalysis to investigate the relationship between sexual selection and sexual size dimorphism (SSD) in animals. A thread 🧵 1/8.

RT @Mikejennions: Our (Lauren Harrison, @DanielWANoble & I) meta-analysis testing for greater male variability in personality in animals ha….

RT @BlakeRobMills: ✨✨New Package✨✨.Happy to announce that I am soft launching my R color palette package {MetBrewer} today! Currently has o….

RT @rose_odea: Our guide to mixed models for quantifying individual differences in personality, plasticity, and predictability is now publi….

RT @LouvrierJulie: “No need to fight for equality anymore” ? This inequality is a deep rooted problem that needs to be tackled at every lev….

RT @brbbfreitas: @TimJanicke, @borjamila, @cjytheb & I are conducting a #MetaAnalysis on the acoustic adaptation hypothesis. If you have un….

RT @UpamaAich: Delighted to see our evolution paper online: Male mating history has contrasting effects on precopulatory mating behaviour a….

More research is needed to understand the mechanisms promoting the evolution of SSD and its consequences!.Ecological character displacement might have its role to play 🤔. 🧵 8/8.

As for Δβ𝘴𝘴, we did not detect a significant relationship with SSD. All of this leads us to believe that the sex differences in body size are not primarily mediated by sex differences in sexual selection at a broader taxonomic scale. 🧵 7/8

Overall, we found a positive relationship between Δ𝘐𝘴 and SSD, suggesting that stronger competition for mates in males might be associated with the evolution of bigger males. However, SSD only predicts 9% of the variation in Δ𝘐𝘴. 🧵 6/8

🌟 Interestingly, one outlier was the redback spider, with an extremely female-biased SSD. This species also has a peculiar mating strategy, where the female engages in sexual cannibalism. 🕷️📷 by Ken Jones. 🧵 5/8

For our phylogenetically-informed meta-analysis, we extracted 2 metrics from the literature, which we converted to our effect sizes: .- the sex difference in the opportunity for sexual selection (Δ𝘐𝘴).- the sex difference in the strength of sexual selection (Δβ𝘴𝘴). 🧵 4/8.

That's why we compiled effect sizes for 59 species to cover a broad range of animal taxa, including arthropods 🕷️ fishes 🐠 amphibians 🦎 reptiles 🐍 birds 🐦 and mammals 🐿️. For each species, we computed estimates of SSD based on published sex-specific bodyweight data. 🧵 3/8

A few studies investigated this matter in a limited amount of species and suggest that sexual selection can either play a major, minor or no role in the evolution of SSD. ➡️ Our aim was to assess if there is a pattern across the animal tree of life. 🧵 2/8.

Very happy to see how @QuantaMagazine covered our study (with @TimJanicke, @lennarthamburg, @L_MarieOrleach) about 𝘀𝗲𝘅𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀!. 🤓 Have a look at the article here:

RT @bumble_being: Just a weevil munching on Ivy 🥰 Liophloeus tessulatus, I think @WeevilRS

RT @DBergerBiol: Sexual conflict drives sexual dimorphism in immunity in seed beetles Females adapt to mitigate ef….

RT @TimJanicke: Females are typically coy – just as proposed by Darwin? Maybe not: In a #MetaAnalysis with @S_Fromonteil, @lennarthamburg a….