The Genetical Evolution of Patterns of Sexuality: Darwinian Fitness

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Abstract
Fisher (1930) was perhaps the first to realize that the key to sex ratio evolution lay in the almost trivial fact that (under diploidy) everyone has 1 mother and 1 father; that in terms of autosomal genes males and females contribute equally to any zygote formed. This observation proves a useful key to a host of other sex related problems. Fitness measures for the alteration of sex function are often of the general form W = .cxa.m/m + .cxa.f/f. In such a measure male and female function are assigned equal weight. It is somewhat surprising that this notion continues to hold under haplodiploidy (at least from the mother''s viewpoint). Inbreeding and fluctuating or stochastic environments were not covered, and it will be interesting to see how well the .cxa.m/m + .cxa.f/f notion holds up these alterations in the models proposed.