Why do males and females of some species look so different?

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Examples of the diversity and magnitude of horn development among horned beetles. Surprisingly the growth of horns is quite uniform across sexes. Instead female beetles reabsorb massive amounts of horn tissue grown just a few days earlier. Credit: Co ...
Examples of the diversity and magnitude of horn development among horned beetles. Surprisingly, the growth of horns is quite uniform across sexes. Instead, female beetles reabsorb massive amounts of horn tissue grown just a few days earlier. Credit: Courtesy Armin Moczek
Why and how do males and females of the same species often look so different? Armin Mocsek (Indiana University) has shown that in a certain group of insects, sex-differences in appearance are not the product of growing structures in a sex-specific manner, as previously assumed, but rather are generated by the sex-specific loss, or removal, of structures initially grown alike by both males and females.


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