Zipple Matthew N, Chang Kuo Daniel, Meng Xinmiao, Reichard Tess M, Guess Kwynn, Vogt Caleb C, Moeller Andrew H, Sheehan Michael J
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Science. 2025 Jan 3;387(6729):81-85. doi: 10.1126/science.adq0579. Epub 2025 Jan 2.
Contingency (or "luck") in early life plays an important role in shaping individuals' development. By comparing the developmental trajectories of functionally genetically identical free-living mice who either experienced high levels of resource competition (males) or did not (females), we show that competition magnifies early contingency. Male resource competition results in a feedback loop that magnifies the importance of early contingency and pushes individuals onto divergent, self-reinforcing life trajectories, while the same process appears absent in females. Our results indicate that the strength of sexual selection may be self-limiting, and they highlight the potential for contingency to lead to differences in life outcomes, even in the absence of any underlying differences in ability ("merit").
早期生活中的偶然性（或“运气”）在塑造个体发展方面起着重要作用。通过比较功能基因相同的自由生活小鼠的发育轨迹，这些小鼠要么经历了高水平的资源竞争（雄性），要么没有经历（雌性），我们发现竞争放大了早期偶然性。雄性资源竞争导致一个反馈循环，放大了早期偶然性的重要性，并将个体推向不同的、自我强化的生命轨迹，而雌性似乎不存在同样的过程。我们的结果表明，性选择的强度可能是自我限制的，并且它们凸显了偶然性导致生命结果差异的可能性，即使在能力（“功绩”）没有任何潜在差异的情况下也是如此。
