Sex, death and tragedy

The population consequences of sexual conflict are relatively unexplored. In a recent paper, Le Galliard et al. now show that males of the common lizard Lacerta vivipara cause such damage to females that male-biased populations decrease in size, posing a real risk to the persistence of local lizard populations. Their study reveals surprising parallels between sexual conflict and the tragedy of the commons, where selfish competition over females destroys the very resource (i.e. the females) over which the males are fighting.