Facial masculinity does not appear to be a condition-dependent male ornament and does not reflect MHC heterozygosity in humans

Arslan A. Zaidi, Julie D. White, Brooke C. Mattern, Corey R. Liebowitz, David A. Puts, Peter Claes, Mark D. Shriver

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

46 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent studies have called into question the idea that facial masculinity is a condition-dependent male ornament that indicates immunocompetence in humans. We add to this growing body of research by calculating an objective measure of facial masculinity/ femininity using 3D images in a large sample (n = 1,233) of people of European ancestry. We show that facial masculinity is positively correlated with adult height in both males and females. However, facial masculinity scales with growth similarly in males and females, suggesting that facial masculinity is not exclusively a male ornament, as male ornaments are typically more sensitive to growth in males compared with females. Additionally, we measured immunocompetence via heterozygosity at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a widely-used genetic marker of immunity. We show that, while height is positively correlated with MHC heterozygosity, facial masculinity is not. Thus, facial masculinity does not reflect immunocompetence measured by MHC heterozygosity in humans. Overall, we find no support for the idea that facial masculinity is a condition-dependent male ornament that has evolved to indicate immunocompetence.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1633-1638
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume116
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 29 2019
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank the participants for providing the data necessary to carry out this study. We thank the members of the M.D.S. laboratory and the D.A.P. laboratory for helping with data collection; and thank Tina Lasisi and Tomás González-Zarzar for helpful discussions on the manuscript. Finally, we thank the Penn State Center for Human Evolution and Diversity (CHED), Research Fund KU Leuven (Grant BOF-C1, C14/15/081), and the Research Program of the Fund for Scientific Research–Flanders (Belgium) (Grant FWO, G078518N) for funding.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 National Academy of Sciences. All Rights Reserved.

Keywords

  • Facial masculinity
  • Human evolution
  • Immunocompetence handicap hypothesis
  • MHC heterozygosity
  • Sexual selection

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Facial masculinity does not appear to be a condition-dependent male ornament and does not reflect MHC heterozygosity in humans'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this