Fig. 1: Publications on sperm competition versus cryptic female choice.
From: The history of sexual selection research provides insights as to why females are still understudied
Comparison of number of publications on sexual selection (blue line), sperm competition (orange line), and cryptic female choice (gray line) over time. Sperm competition studies by far outnumber cryptic female choice studies. The total number of papers published on sperm competition is 5219 compared to 728 on cryptic female choice, and the ratio for year 2021 is 147 versus 29. The number of publications were retrieved from Web of Science searches in “all fields” for “sexual selection”, “sperm competition” and “cryptic female choice” (June 6, 2022).
