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Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of theoretical and empirical studies of sex allocation, transforming how we understand the allocation of resources to male and female reproduction in vertebrates, invertebrates, protozoa, and plants. In this landmark book, Stuart West synthesizes the vast literature on sex allocation, providing the conceptual framework the field has been lacking and demonstrating how sex-allocation studies can shed light on broader questions in evolutionary and behavioral biology. West clarifies fundamental misconceptions in the application of theory to empirical data. He examines the field's successes and failures, and describes the research areas where much important work is yet to be done. West reveals how a shared underlying theoretical framework unites findings of sex-ratio variation across a huge range of life forms, from malarial parasites and hermaphroditic worms to sex-changing fish and mammals. He shows how research on sex allocation has been central to many critical questions and controversies in evolutionary and behavioral biology, and he argues that sex-allocation research serves as a key testing ground for different theoretical approaches and can help resolve debates about social evolution, parent-offspring conflict, genomic conflict, and levels of selection. Certain to become the defining book on the subject for the next generation of researchers, Sex Allocation explains why the study of sex allocation provides an ideal model system for advancing our understanding of the constraints on adaptation among all living things in the natural world.

Sex allocation --- Sex allocation. --- Sex allocation -- Congresses. --- Sex allocation -- Juvenile. --- Allocation, Sex --- Sex (Biology)

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There is extensive evidence that vertebrates of all classes have the ability to control the sexes of the offspring they produce. Despite dramatic differences in the mechanisms by which different taxa determine the initial sex of offspring, each group has found its own way of adjusting offspring sex ratios in response to social and environmental cues. For example, stress is a well-known modulator of offspring sex in members of all groups studied to date. Food availability, and limitation in particular, is another common cue that stimulates biases in offspring sex ratios in a wide variety of species. Offspring sex can be adjusted at the primary level, which occurs prior to conception, or at the secondary level, during embryonic development. While the mechanistic pathways that ultimately result in sex ratio biases and the developmental time-points sensitive to those mechanisms likely differ among taxa, the key involvement of steroid hormones in the process of sex ratio adjustment appears to be pervasive throughout. This book reviews the systems of sex determination at play in different vertebrate groups, summarizes the evidence that members of all vertebrate taxa can facultatively adjust offspring sex, and discusses when and how these adjustments can take place.

Sex allocation. --- Vertebrates --- Physiology. --- Life sciences. --- Behavioral sciences. --- Developmental biology. --- Animal genetics. --- Animal physiology. --- Life Sciences. --- Animal Physiology. --- Animal Genetics and Genomics. --- Developmental Biology. --- Behavioral Sciences. --- Allocation, Sex --- Sex (Biology) --- Animal behavior. --- Animals --- Animals, Habits and behavior of --- Behavior, Animal --- Ethology --- Animal psychology --- Zoology --- Ethologists --- Psychology, Comparative --- Development (Biology) --- Biology --- Growth --- Ontogeny --- Genetics --- Animal physiology --- Anatomy --- Behavior --- Physiology