t there was a difference when he compared the reproductive success of the females to the success of the males. According to Bateman’s research a female fruit fly could expect to have about 60 to 80 offspring regardless of the number of male fruit flies she copulated with. However the reproductive success of a male fruit fly depended on the number of females it had mated with. “Those who copulated with one female produced about 40 young, those who copulated with two produced about 80, and so forth.” Bateman also notes the difference each sex of fruit fly could expect to produce-females could expect to have about the same amount of offspring, whereas some males had a great number of offspring (far above average) while others failed to produce at all. In general males had a much wider range of potential offspring and therefore the males had potential for great success or complete failure. These finding prompted Bateman to conclude “selection would produce tactics of male mating competition, as well as an undiscriminatory eagerness in the males and a discriminatory passivity in the females.”Daly and Wilson claim that the conclusions made by Batman on fruit flies reproductive condition also hold true for Homo sapiens. According to Daly and Wilson, human females have a lower maximum number of offspring they can produce when compared to males. Females also have a much smaller range of mating outcomes when compared to males. Daly and Wilson cite the work of Robert Trivers to corroborate this idea. According to Trivers, the key to understanding the difference between male and female fruit flies, as well as humans, is by determining the amount of parental investment given by either sex. According to the their theory females make the largest parental investment and consequently can not expect to increase her chances of passing on her genes by mating indiscreetly. Women typically must “invest” time...
