Rob writes:

>Most animals are insects. I believe that in the majority of insect
>species the female is larger than the male. So on the whole, females
>are larger than males, I'm afraid. Try to escape from
>vertebrate-centric bigotry!

Dimorphic size reversal is not only characteristic of invertebrates. It occurs
in vertebrates as well, just not as frequently.

Two papers appeared in today's (Sept. 11, 2003) issue of Nature describing the
extreme reversed sexual size dimorphism that occurred in the extinct Moa. In
one of the papers' abstract. the authors write: "The largest females in this
example of extreme reversed sexual size dimorphism were about 280% the weight
and 150% the height of the largest males, which is unprecedented among birds
and terrestrial mammals."

The most relevant finding of the two papers is that animals that had originally
tentatively been given species status are now recognized to be gender
differences. The two papers are:

L. HUYNEN, C. D. MILLAR2, R. P. & D. M. LAMBERT. "Nuclear DNA
sequences detect
species limits in ancient moa" Nature 425, 175 - 178 (11 September 2003);
doi:10.1038/nature01838  
 
MICHAEL BUNCE, TREVOR H. WORTHY, TOM FORD, WILL HOPPITT, ESKE WILLERSLEV,
ALEXEI DRUMMOND & ALAN COOPER."Extreme reversed sexual size
dimorphism in the
extinct New Zealand moa Dinornis"  Nature 425, 172 - 175 (11 September 2003);
doi:10.1038/nature01871  
 
Wirt Atmar
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