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Home / News

Does male dominance get passed on genetically?

August 22, 2008

Many sociological and anthropological studies have shown that dominant men have more reproductive success because they can attract more partners. While short-term analysis does show that the genetic traits of top-ranked men are passed on more often than those of other men, the variance in male fitness does not influence the genetics of a population in the long run. That's what scientists from the University of Arizona, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology have concluded; they published their findings in a recent PNAS article. Overall, it appears that evolution does not favor dominant males for more than a few generations. On the evolutionary timescales, genetic contributions from the entire community take precedence. A man may be on top the world in his lifetime, but his genetic information won't stand out from those of everyone else in the distant future.





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