Silk, "Why
Polyandry Fails: Sources of Instability in Polyandrous Marriages." Current Anthropology 38, no.
Taken together, our present findings provide evidence that
polyandry can result in multiple paternity and increase thegenetic and phenotypic diversity among half-siblings in T.
Female benefit, male risk:
Polyandry in the true armyworm Pseudaletia unipuncta.
'Polygyny', on the other hand, refers specifically to one man having more than one wife, while '
polyandry' refers to one woman having more than one husband.
"I am monogamous from time to time but I prefer polygamy and
polyandry" (which is, without putting too fine a point on it, when females mate with more than one male.
(Remember that "poly-" is a Greek word-stem meaning "many," as in "polygon", "polygamy", "
polyandry" and "Polynesia.") Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" columns in Scientific American (collected in many books) popularised Golomb's work.
He also cites Sparta's unusual sexual customs, such as
polyandry (wives having more than one husband each), socially acceptable wife-sharing, and institutionalized pederasty between a young male citizen warrior and a teenage boy.
Even an encounter with Tibetan
polyandry he took in his stride--gamely highlighting the harmonious family atmosphere of the home in question.
While
polyandry became a habit for some male settlers who shared one woman and produced their offspring as such, many males who could not find wives remained bachelors all their lives.
The 27 papers in the 2005 edition of the annual volume review recent studies on the evolution of fluctuating asymmetry,
polyandry, aphid- ant interactions, and agriculture in insects; and the evolutionary ecology of gynogenesis and plant adaptation to serpentine.