Sexual segregation and the ecology of the two sexes

According to Greek mythology, Amazons were female warriors who lived on an island. They occasionally met with men of another people to mate, keeping female offspring and sending male offspring back to their fathers. In many animals too, males and females live apart for most of the year, only gathering for mating. These include many fish species (Sims et al., 2001a), birds (Myers, 1981), lizards and snakes (Parmelee & Guyer, 1995; Shine et al., 2003a), and most mammals with a pronounced sexual dimorphism in body size (Ruckstuhl & Neuhaus, 2000). This book aims at synthesizing our current understanding of the evolution of sexual segregation in different vertebrates, focusing on taxa in which there is sufficient evidence to investigate causes of sexual segregation.