Palombit Ryne A
Department of Anthropology, Center for Human Evolutionary Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901.
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2015 May 18;7(6):a017640. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a017640.
One of the earliest recognized forms of sexual conflict was infanticide by males, which imposes serious costs on female reproductive success. Here I review two bodies of evidence addressing coevolved strategies of males and females. The original sexual selection hypothesis arguing that infanticide improves male mating success by accelerating the return of females to fertilizable condition has been generally supported in some taxa--notably, some primates, carnivores, rodents, and cetaceans--but not in other taxa. One result of recent research has been to implicate other selective benefits of infanticide by males in various taxa from insects to birds to mammals, such as acquisition of breeding status or improvement of the female breeding condition. In some cases, however, the adaptive significance of male infanticide remains obscure. The second body of data I review is arguably the most important result of recent research: clarifying the possible female counterstrategies to infanticide. These potential counterstrategies span diverse biological systems, ranging from sexual behavior (e.g., polyandrous mating), to physiology (e.g., the Bruce effect), to individual behavior (e.g., maternal aggression), to social strategies (e.g., association with coalitionary defenders of either sex). Although much remains to be studied, these current data provide compelling evidence of sexually antagonistic coevolution surrounding the phenomenon of infanticide.
最早被认识到的性冲突形式之一是雄性杀婴行为，这给雌性的繁殖成功率带来了沉重代价。在此，我回顾了两方面的证据，它们涉及雄性和雌性共同进化的策略。最初的性选择假说认为，杀婴行为通过加速雌性恢复到可受孕状态来提高雄性的交配成功率，这一假说在一些类群中得到了普遍支持——特别是一些灵长类动物、食肉动物、啮齿动物和鲸类动物——但在其他类群中则不然。最近的研究结果之一是，在从昆虫到鸟类再到哺乳动物的各种类群中，揭示了雄性杀婴行为的其他选择性益处，比如获得繁殖地位或改善雌性的繁殖条件。然而，在某些情况下，雄性杀婴行为的适应性意义仍然不明。我回顾的第二组数据可以说是最近研究的最重要成果：阐明了雌性针对杀婴行为可能采取的反制策略。这些潜在的反制策略涵盖了从性行为（如多配偶交配）到生理机能（如布鲁斯效应），从个体行为（如母性攻击）到社会策略（如与两性的联盟防御者结盟）等多种生物系统。尽管仍有许多有待研究的地方，但这些现有数据为围绕杀婴现象的性对抗协同进化提供了有力证据。
