Robert Trivers' theory of parental investment predicts that the sex making the largest investment in lactation, nurturing and protecting offspring will be more discriminating in mating and that the sex that invests less in offspring will compete for access to the higher investing sex.
References
Trivers, R.L. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed.), Sexual selection and the descent of man, 1871-1971 (pp. 136-179). Chicago, IL: Aldine. ISBN 0-43-562157-2
External links
Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=mozclient&num=50&scoring=d&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=Parental+investment+and+sexual+selection)
Trivers (1972) defined parentalinvestment as "any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that increases the offspring's chance of surviving (and hence reproductive success) at the cost of the parent's ability to invest in other offspring." E.O. Wilson described some ecology factors that are responsible for the evolution of parental care.
However, this investment may still be considered parentalinvestment because the amount of energy used in rearing the offspring is done for the fitness of the colony that can be translated into the fitness of the individual.
Parental care or sibling care may not be directly related individual fitness per se, but it increases the fitness of many thousands of individuals of a very similar genetic constitution.
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