Sex differences in dispersal and the evolution of helping and harming

In this article, we explore the impact of sex-biased dispersal on local relatedness and on selection for helping and harming behavior among males and females. We show that in a patch-structured population, when there is a marked sex bias in dispersal, selection will almost always favor harming behavior among individuals of the sex more prone to dispersal. This result holds regardless of the effects of mating skew or overlapping generations. Selection may well also favor helping behavior among individuals of the philopatric sex, particularly if there is generational overlap, but this is less likely to occur if individuals of the philopatric sex compete more intensely for fewer breeding opportunities. In this last case, if generational overlap is low and mating skew pronounced, the result may be selection for harming behavior among both males and females. In general, the rate of dispersal and the level of relatedness among individuals of one sex do not reliably predict their level of helping or harming behavior; selection on either males or females depends on the dispersal of both sexes.