Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Correlation Between Investment In Sexual Traits And Valve Sexual Dimorphism In Cyprideis Species (Ostracoda), Maria Joao Fernandes Martins, Gene Hunt, Rowan Lockwood, John P. Swaddle, David J. Horne

John Swaddle

Assessing the long-term macroevolutionary consequences of sexual selection has been hampered by the difficulty of studying this process in the fossil record. Cytheroid ostracodes offer an excellent system to explore sexual selection in the fossil record because their readily fossilized carapaces are sexually dimorphic. Specifically, males are relatively more elongate than females in this superfamily. This sexual shape difference is thought to arise so that males carapaces can accommodate their very large copulatory apparatus, which can account for up to one-third of body volume. Here we test this widely held explanation for sexual dimorphism in cytheroid ostracodes by correlating investment …