Maternal effects, paternal effects and sexual selection

Maternal and paternal effects can lead to complicated evolutionary dynamics , including evolution in the opposite direction to selection. Recent studie s demonstrate that parental effects on sexually selected traits, as well as preferences for those traits, might be large. Although these findings are likely to have consequences for both the evolutionary dynamics and equilibr ia of sexual selection, theory is lacking. Because parents are expected to maximize their own fitness, rather than that of a specific offspring, the m agnitude (and even direction) of parental effects are context dependent. By extension, this dynamic nature of parental effects might help to explain t he maintenance of variation in many sexually selected traits.