Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Animal homosexuality in evolutionary perspective
- 2 The comparative study of homosexual behaviour
- 3 Genetics of homosexuality
- 4 Ontogenetic processes
- 5 The endocrine and nervous systems: a network of causality for homosexual behaviour
- 6 Immunology and homosexuality
- 7 Sexual segregation effects
- 8 The social, life history and ecological theatres of animal homosexual behaviour
- 9 Homosexual behaviour in primates
- 10 A Biosocial Model for the evolution and maintenance of homosexual behaviour in birds and mammals
- Appendix 1 Glossary
- Appendix 2 Predictions of the Synthetic Reproductive Skew Model of Homosexuality and results obtained in the comparative tests of the model carried out in birds and mammals
- Appendix 3 Comments on further results of comparative analyses of independent contrasts reported in the full correlation matrices of birds and mammals
- References
- Index
- Plates
3 - Genetics of homosexuality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Animal homosexuality in evolutionary perspective
- 2 The comparative study of homosexual behaviour
- 3 Genetics of homosexuality
- 4 Ontogenetic processes
- 5 The endocrine and nervous systems: a network of causality for homosexual behaviour
- 6 Immunology and homosexuality
- 7 Sexual segregation effects
- 8 The social, life history and ecological theatres of animal homosexual behaviour
- 9 Homosexual behaviour in primates
- 10 A Biosocial Model for the evolution and maintenance of homosexual behaviour in birds and mammals
- Appendix 1 Glossary
- Appendix 2 Predictions of the Synthetic Reproductive Skew Model of Homosexuality and results obtained in the comparative tests of the model carried out in birds and mammals
- Appendix 3 Comments on further results of comparative analyses of independent contrasts reported in the full correlation matrices of birds and mammals
- References
- Index
- Plates
Summary
I never have seen any literature on homosexuality with which I agreed. I have my own theory that the tendency to homosexuality is basically inherited. It may be brought out through environment. The parents are usually not homosexual but the uncles and aunts may be. I have a suspicion that this might be worth investigating.
(Michael D., homosexual participant in Henry’s (1941) study, p. 144)That homosexuality, as most other phenotypic traits, depends directly or indirectly, along a large or small causality network, on the expression of one or more genes should be regarded as a truism of little informative power. Studies on the genetics of homosexuality, if they are to be useful, should address more specific questions, such as the ones listed in Box 3.1.
Needless to say, addressing such issues is far from easy, but progress is being made as a result of research on non-human animals; Michael D. would probably have been thrilled to know that advances are also occurring in the study of the genetic mechanisms underpinning human homosexuality, as I will show in this chapter.
The various aspects of the genetic basis of homosexuality could be encapsulated in the following three key questions:
(a) Which genes are involved in the development of the trait, how and when are they expressed in the organism and what is that they actually do?
(b) How are those genes inherited?
(c) How did they arise in the population in the first place and how are they maintained over time?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Animal HomosexualityA Biosocial Perspective, pp. 55 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010