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Replying to: D. T. Gwynne, K. A. Judge & C. D. Kelly Nature466, 10.1038/nature09275 (2010)

Our recent study of pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection in the sex-role-reversed Gulf pipefish indicates that males prefer to mate with larger females compared to smaller females, that larger females transfer more eggs per copulation than smaller females, that the eggs from larger females are more likely to result in viable offspring than eggs from smaller females, and that males experience fitness trade-offs between broods. We suggest that the most likely explanation for this suite of results is that males exert choice before and after copulation in a way that favours larger females over smaller females during every phase of pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection. Gwynne et al. have challenged the interpretation of one facet of our results by suggesting that males do not differentially allocate resources to offspring …