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Gardner, A.; Arce, A.; Alpedrinha, J.
Budding dispersal and the sex ratio
2009 Journal of Evolutionary Biology (22): 1036-1045
There is much interest in understanding how population demography impacts upon social evolution. Here, we consider the impact of rate and pattern of dispersal upon a classic social evolutionary trait - the sex ratio. We recover existing analytical results for individual dispersal, and we extend these to allow for budding dispersal. In particular, while a cancelling of relatedness and kin competition effects means that the sex ratio is unaffected by the rate of individual dispersal, we find that a decoupling of relatedness and kin competition means that budding dispersal favours increasingly female-biased sex ratios. More generally, our analysis illustrates the relative ease with which biological problems involving class structure can be solved using a kin selection approach to social evolution theory.
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