Early-life food stress hits females harder than males in insects: A meta-analysis of sex differences in environmental sensitivity

Abstract

Fitness consequences of early-life environmental conditions are often sex-specific, but corresponding evidence for invertebrates remains inconclusive. Here, we use meta-analysis to evaluate sex-specific sensitivity to larval nutritional conditions in insects. Using literature-derived data for 85 species with broad phylogenetic and ecological coverage, we show that females are generally more sensitive to food stress than males. Stressful nutritional conditions during larval development typically lead to female-biased mortality and thus increasingly male-biased sex ratios of emerging adults. We further demonstrate that the general trend of higher sensitivity to food stress in females can primarily be attributed to their typically larger body size in insects and hence higher energy needs during development. By contrast, there is no consistent evidence of sex-biased sensitivity in sexually size-monomorphic species. Drawing conclusions regarding sex-biased sensitivity in species with male-biased size dimorphism remains to wait for the accumulation of relevant data. Our results suggest that environmental conditions leading to elevated juvenile mortality may potentially affect the performance of insect populations further by reducing the proportion of females among individuals reaching reproductive age. Accounting for sex-biased mortality is therefore essential to understanding the dynamics and demography of insect populations, not least importantly in the context of ongoing insect declines.