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Why girls want to be boys
L W Beukeboom1, T J de Jong, I Pen
1Section Animal Ecology, Institute of Evolutionary and Ecological Sciences, University of Leiden, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
The mechanisms by which sex is genetically determined are bewilderingly diverse and appear to change rapidly during evolution.(1) What makes the sex-determining process so prone to perturbations? Two recent articles(2,3) explore theoretically the role of genetic conflict in sex determination evolution. Both studies use the idea that selection on sex-determining genes may act differently in parents and in offspring and they suggest that the resulting conflict can drive changes in sex-determining mechanisms.