Definitions
Human sperm competition: The competition, inside a woman, between sperms from two or more different men for the “prize” of fertilizing any egg the woman might produce
Introduction
The potential evolutionary importance of sperm competition was first recognized for insects (Parker 1970), but within a little over a decade, the growing theoretical framework was being extended to a range of other animals, including humans (Smith 1984). Smith’s suggestion was seen as daring and thought-provoking, but triggered little opposition. However, when a series of papers by Baker and Bellis (see Baker and Bellis 1995) claimed evidence that sperm competition really had played a part in shaping human sexuality, resistance to the idea began to grow. Increasingly the view was expressed that even if sperm competition did occur occasionally in humans, its evolutionary significance was minimal. Some simply doubted that women behaved often enough in the way necessary for sperm competition to be a...
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References
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Baker, R. (2016). Opposition to Human Sperm Competition. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1958-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1958-1
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