Female Role in the Gender Selection of Baby to be Boy/Girl

There is a Female Role in the Gender Selection of Baby to be a Boy or a Girl, a study by scientists at the University of Exeter (UK), Okayama University and Kyushu University (Japan) confirms. Females regulate the gender of their babies to inherit either their mother's or grandfather's qualities. High-quality females are more likely to have baby girls. While weaker females from genetically successful and stronger fathers produce more baby boys.

The Study on Female Role in the Gender Selection of Baby to be a Boy or a Girl

The study, by scientists at the University of Exeter (UK), Okayama University and Kyushu University (Japan), is published January 9 in the journal Ecology Letters. It shows for the first time that females are able to manipulate the sex of their offspring to compensate for the fact that some of the genes which make a good male make a bad female and vice versa.

The research study focuses on the broad-horned flour beetle, Gnatocerus cornutus, but the team believes the findings could apply to other species across the animal kingdom, even mammals.

The broad-horned flour beetle is a well-known pest that feeds on flour and grains, such as porridge and semolina. Around three to four centimetres long and reddish-brown in colour, they live all over the world.

Male flour beetles with large jaws have the most mating success and win the most fights, so are seen as 'high quality'. However, the muscles and body shape needed to carry the massive jaws mean that large-jawed males father daughters with a more masculine body-shape, less adept at carrying eggs. This means that these successful males father daughters who produce fewer offspring.

Why Female has a Role in the Gender Selection of Baby

Poor-quality females produce more sons who inherit their grandfather's good qualities. Conversely, high-quality daughters, fathered by poor males, produce relatively small-jawed and weak sons, and compensate by producing more female offspring that will inherit their mother's good attributes.

Corresponding author Dr David Hosken of Biosciences at the University of Exeter (Cornwall Campus) said:

Our study shows females are able to bias the sex ratio of their offspring in surprising and subtle ways. These findings shed new light on why some families have lots of sons, while others have mainly daughters. Of course everyone will be interested to know if the study can help explain why this sometimes happens in human families but I'm afraid we can't answer that!

The research story is republished by The Science Daily from materials provided by University of Exeter.