The aim of this paper is to study inequality and deprivations as reflected in the human sex ratio (commonly defined as the number of males per 100 females). The particular focus is on three emerging economies, viz., Russia, India and China. The paper compares and contrasts the experiences of these countries and discusses policy issues. It is noted that while the feminist perspective on the issu...

In virtually all multicellular eukaryotes, mitochondria are transmitted exclusively through one parent, usually the mother. In this short review, we discuss some of the major consequences of uniparental transmission of mitochondria, including deleterious effects in males and selection for increased transmission through females. Many of these consequences, particularly sex ratio distortion, have...

Terms: parasitoid wasps, sex ratio, host size, local mate competition, host size model, host quality model, Waage's hypothesis, haplodiploid sex determination, differential mortality of the sexes, body size, development time, dispersal, behavioral constraints, sperm depletion, extrachromosomal factors, genetic variation, clutch size, methodological suggestions, assumptions of sex ratio models, ...

The allocation of resources to male and female progeny is a major component of the reproductive strategies of all sexual plants and animals. Over the past 30 years there has been intensive theoretical and experimental investigation of how natural selection moulds the sex ratio. Here, we discuss recent exciting developments and new applications of sex allocation theory and highlight some unresol...

In this study, I predict that the global variation of offspring sex ratio might be influenced in part by the level of parasite stress. From an energetic standpoint, higher gestational costs of producing a male offspring could decrease male births in a population with limited resources. This implies that, any factor that limits the parental resources could be expected to favor female offspring p...

The ratio of males to females in a population is known to influence the behaviour, life histories and demography of animals. A recent experimental study finds that sex ratio also affects human economic behaviour, and in a manner consistent with evolutionary theory.

Published reports on the sex ratio of spina bifida have been reviewed. With one exception, there seems to be no evidence of variation in the sex ratio of spina bifida. In particular, unlike anencephaly, the sex ratio of spina bifida seems to be unrelated to the prevalence of the malformation: this (M/(M+F)) is of the order of 0.44 in respect of all spina bifida births (liveborn and stillborn). ...

Sex ratio evolution has been one of the most successful areas of evolutionary theory. Pioneered by Düsing and Fisher under panmixia, and later extended by Hamilton to cover local mate competition (LMC), these models often assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that all females are fertilized. Here, we examine the effects of relaxing this assumption, under both panmictic and LMC models with di...