High-performing males have underachieving daughters

An interesting article in Nature last week, summarized here, described how, in red-deer, successful fathers tend to have unsuccessful daughters. In contrast male deer that carried genes that led to greater success in daughters were less successful themselves. This provides an interesting insight into the so called 'battle of the sexes' and may help explain why some genetic variation is maintained in sexual species.

This is relevant to our discussion of sexual selection but we will also return to this topic in the ecology section when we talk about different mating strategies.