Example female Tasmanian devils usually outlive the males as babies. Same with some species of sharks. How come this doesn’t create natural populations problems or does it?
In: Biology
Monogamy isnt super common in most species. And one male can get a lot of females pregnant or fertilize their eggs (depending on what kind of reproduction we are talking about)
Even with humans, which the majority likes to claim is a monogamous species, you hear all the time about men who have children who are half-siblings born close together. (both as part of a multiple partners household and as “my husband cheated on me, I found out when we were both pregnant at the same time” type stories)
In the case of only few males surviving, this isn’t a problem. Tasmanian Devils are not monogamous and you don’t need a 1:1 pairing, you could have one male Devil impregnate dozens of females.
Look at bees, they are about 1% male, if that. But at the end of the day, males are only needed for one step in the entire process and as long as they are available at that stage, it doesn’t matter too much how many of them are around at other times.
In the wild, mommies and daddies don’t get married and daddies can make all the babies they want with random mommies. So as long as some males are around to be daddies, everything will be fine.
They don’t practice monogamy. One male can mate with countless females to insure they all produce offspring.
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