Description:
"West has great command of a vast body of theory and empirical work, but this book does more than synthesize existing literature. West explains what has been accomplished, where the field has failed to clear things up, and what needs to be done. Anyone working on sex allocation can start with this book and get a firm grasp of the concepts, experiments, comparative observations, and key outstanding questions."--Steven A. Frank, University of California, Irvine
"This is a great book. It captures the excitement of sex-allocation research, the significant progress that has been made, and the areas that have been relatively neglected. West does a great job of showing the tight connection between evolutionary theory and empirical testing, and the ways both can mutually inspire each other. He deals with all the major issues and guides the reader through the entire field."--Jacobus J. Boomsma, University of Copenhagen
Review Quotes: "Understanding mating strategies and the allocation of resources to male versus female reproduction has long been a major goal of evolutionary studies. In this comprehensive synthesis, West makes several important contributions to the field of evolutionary biology. . . . Because the work primarily focuses on how natural selection shapes sex allocation for given sex determination systems, sex allocation is proven an important phenomenon for studying adaptation. This thorough conceptual perspective, blending theory and data, summarizes sex allocation theory and how different areas are applied to different organisms."-- "Choice"