PubMed Health⌕ Search

PubMed · 2782848

Some multivariate tests for differences in sexual dimorphism between human populations.

Abstract

Two multivariate statistical tests are presented for examining differences in sexual dimorphism between human populations. One test refers to general differences in sexual dimorphism; the other, only to differences in size aspects of sexual dimorphism. There is no current resolution to the complementary problem of testing for differences of direction in sexual dimorphism. By applying the tests to a comparison of sexual dimorphism in 26 samples of skulls from a world-wide distribution of human populations, significant results (at alpha = 0.05) were found in the majority of cases with the general test, and in a minority of cases with the size test.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

G N Van Vark, P G van der Sman, J Dijkema, J E Buikstra. Some multivariate tests for differences in sexual dimorphism between human populations.. https://doi.org/10.1080/03014468900000432

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

Molecular heterochrony and the evolution of sociality in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris).

Sibling care is a hallmark of social insects, but its evolution remains challenging to explain at the molecular level. The hypothesis that sibling care evolved from ancestral maternal care in primitively eusocial insects has been elaborated to involve heterochronic changes in gene expression. This elaboration leads to the prediction that workers in these species will show patterns of gene expression more similar to foundress queens, who express maternal care behaviour, than to established queens engaged solely in reproductive behaviour. We tested this idea in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) using a microarray platform with approximately 4500 genes. Unlike the wasp Polistes metricus, in which support for the above prediction has been obtained, we found that patterns of brain gene expression in foundress and queen bumblebees were more similar to each other than to workers. Comparisons of differentially expressed genes derived from this study and gene lists from microarray studies in Polistes and the honeybee Apis mellifera yielded a shared set of genes involved in the regulation of related social behaviours across independent eusocial lineages. Together, these results suggest that multiple independent evolutions of eusociality in the insects might have involved different evolutionary routes, but nevertheless involved some similarities at the molecular level.

Analysis of Variance↗

Confidence intervals for the standardized effect arising in the comparison of two normal populations.

Confidence intervals for a standardized effect are derived after stabilizing the variance of the Welch t-statistic. Simulation studies demonstrate the viability of the resulting intervals for a wide range of parameter values and sample sizes as small as five. The methodology is extended to the combination of results from several studies, so as to obtain a confidence interval for a representative standardized effect for all the studies. The methods are illustrated on a recent meta-analytic study of systolic blood pressure reduction during a weight reducing regime, as well as the classical Mumford data on psychological intervention and hospital length of stay.

Analysis of Variance↗