It takes two to tango

Abstract

In most taxa, females are more likely than males to care for offspring. Why? Ever since Trivers' landmark work, the answer has been traced back to sexual differences in pre-mating reproductive investment (unequal gamete size or anisogamy). However, recent work shows that parental investment theory has inadvertently ignored a profoundly simple fact of life: every offspring has a mother and father. Taking this into account completely changes how we should think about sex differences in parental care.