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Parent–offspring conflict (POC) is an expression coined in 1974 by Robert Trivers. It is used to describe the evolutionary conflict arising from differences in optimal parental investment (PI) in an offspring from the standpoint of the parent and the offspring. PI is any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that decreases the ...
Robert Ludlow "Bob" Trivers (/ ˈ t r ɪ v ər z /; born February 19, 1943) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist.Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974).
The Trivers–Willard hypothesis has been applied to resource differences among individuals in a society as well as to resource differences among societies.Investigations in humans pose a number of practical and methodological difficulties, [6] but while a 2007 review of previous research found that empirical evidence for the hypothesis was mixed, the author noted that it received greater ...
Parent–offspring conflict, which predicts that because the genetic interests of parents and offspring are not identical, offspring will be selected to manipulate their parents in order to ensure higher investment, and that, conversely, parents will be selected to manipulate their offspring.
Sexual selection is an evolutionary concept that has been used to explain why, in some species, male and female individuals behave differently in selecting mates. In 1930, Ronald Fisher wrote The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, [3] in which he introduced the modern concept of parental investment, introduced the sexy son hypothesis, and introduced Fisher's principle.
The theory of parent–offspring conflict rests on the fact that even though a parent and his/her offspring are 50% genetically related, they are also 50% genetically different. All things being equal, a parent would want to allocate their resources equally amongst their offspring, while each offspring may want a little more for themselves.
This is because the best interests of the parent do not always match the best interests of the offspring. Maternal-infant conflict is of interest due to the intensity of maternal investment in her offspring. In humans, mothers often invest years of care into their children due to the long developmental period before children become self-sufficient.
The parent is trying to maximize its number of grandchildren, while the offspring is trying to maximize the number of its own offspring equivalents (via offspring and nieces and nephews) it produces. If the parent cannot manipulate the offspring and therefore loses in the conflict, the grandparents with the fewest grandchildren seem to be ...