Titre |
The evolution of sexual size dimorphism in prosimian primates. |
Descripteur matière |
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Détenteur du document |
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Titre de la série |
American Journal of Primatology. |
Résumé |
The four major hypotheses advanced to explain the evolution of sexually dimorphic characters invoke sexual selection, natural selection, allometry, and phylogenetic inertia. In this paper, each of these hypotheses is examined for its usefulness in explaining the inter-specific variation in sexual size dimorphism among prosimian primates. Data on body weight and the degree of sexual dimorphism were obtained for 32 prosimian and 95 simian species. Although prosimians exhibited significantly less sexual dimorphism than simians, there was nevertheless significant variation in dimorphism among them. The degree of sexual dimorphism in prosimians did not show significant variance at any taxonomic level, but the majority of variance occurred within genera. Thus, sexual dimorphism in size among prosimians is probably not constrained by phylogeny at the generic level and above. There was no significant correlation between body size and the degree of sexual dimorphism in prosimians, suggesting the absence of an allometric effect. Similarly there was no relationship between body size and sexual dimorphism among simians in this size range. |