Anisogamy, Expenditure of Reproductive Effort, and the Optimality of Having Two Sexes

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.1040.0179

No good formal arguments exist for a central question in biology: Why, in species that have sexual reproduction, are there usually only “males” and “females”? We present a nonlinear optimization model that supports the conclusion that having only two sexes maximizes long-run viability.

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