Humans are sexually dimorphic: men and women differ in body build and composition, craniofacial structure, and voice pitch, likely mediated in part by developmental testosterone. Sexual selection hypotheses posit that, ancestrally, more ‘masculine’ men may have acquired more mates and/or sired more viable offspring. Thus far, however, evidence for either association is unclear. Here, we meta-analyze the relationships between six masculine traits and mating/reproductive outcomes . Voice pitch, height, and testosterone all predicted mating; however, strength/muscularity was the strongest and only consistent predictor of both mating and reproduction. Facial masculinity and digit ratios did not significantly predict either. There was no clear evidence for any effects of masculinity on offspring viability. Our findings support arguments that strength/muscularity may be sexually selected in humans, but cast doubt regarding selection for other forms of masculinity and highlight the need to increase tests of evolutionary hypotheses outside of industrialized populations. Many species show sexual dimorphism: traits that are different or more exaggerated in either females or males. These traits are often thought to have evolved because they increase an individual’s chances of producing offspring. While the evolution of male dimorphism – often referred to as masculinity – is generally well understood in many animal species, opinions differ as to whether such traits also increase male reproduction in humans.Lidborg et al. tried to shed light on the evolution of masculine traits in human males  by testing whether men with these traits reported having more sexual partners and/or whether they had more children compared to men in which these traits were not as extreme. To do so, Lidborg et al. compiled previously published data from populations all across the world and tested the associations between the traits and both partner numbers and reproduction.The results showed that men who were physically stronger and more muscular reported having more sexual partners and, in societies that do not use contraception, these men also had more children than other men. Lidborg et al. also found that in industrialized societies, men who were taller, had a lower voice pitch and higher testosterone levels also reported more sexual partners, but they did not produce more offspring. Lastly, the analysis showed that men with more robust facial structures faces did not report having more partners or more children.These findings suggest that traits such as strength and muscle mass in men may be favoured by evolution. Importantly, this seems to be the case across all societies from which Lidborg et al. analyzed data. The results also show that some of the traits Lidborg et al. tested – such as being tall – might increase the number of partners men in industrialized countries have, but not the number of children men in more traditional societies (such as hunter-gatherers) produce. This could be because women’s preferences for men’s traits differ between cultures.Ultimately, Lidborg et al.’s analysis suggests that across different cultural contexts, only strength and muscularity truly do seem to matter for men’s mating and reproduction. Sexual dimorphism refers to sex differences in morphological and behavioral traits, excluding reproductive organs , with paDimorphic traits that are exaggerated in males are typically referred to as masculine. In humans, masculine faces are characterized by features such as a pronounced brow ridge, a longer lower face, and wider mandibles, cheekbones, and chins . Men areThe development of these masculine traits in men is influenced by exposure to androgens, particularly testosterone. With the exception of 2D:4D, which is commonly claimed to be influenced primarily by prenatal testosterone levels and is present at birth , masculifertility), by acquiring a greater number of partners which may in turn mediate offspring numbers (greater mating success), and/or by producing more surviving offspring (greater reproductive success).Key to the assumption that men’s masculine traits are sexually selected is that masculine traits should be reliably associated with greater biological fitness. Men may increase fitness by producing a greater quantity of offspring overall , despite concerns regarding its validity since at least 2005 . While bmale-male competition hypothesis, authors have argued that formidable  men are better equipped to compete with other men for resources, status, and partners , as these are assumed to have correlated with reproductive success in men under ancestral conditions .stronger relationships between any evolved motivation for sex, and actual sexual behavior, in these samples than would have necessarily been found ancestrally. Secondly, however, any adaptation which has been maintained across recent hominid lineages must have been adaptive on average across diverse reproductive ecologies. As such, if the proposed adaptation  exists, we should expect to see both: i. masculinity being associated with increased mating success in both high and  low fertility populations, and ii. masculinity being on average positively associated with fertility, and potentially offspring survival, in non-contraception/high fertility populations.A key problem, however, is that the predictions outlined above do not always capture the diversity of human reproductive ecologies even where diverse data exists. We have already noted the fact that female choice may be important to outcomes above. Furthermore, even amongst non-contracepting populations, differences in rates of polygyny, pair-bond breakdown, and attitudes to fertility may moderate reproductive success and its variance. For instance, monogamous cultures do not typically show greater variance in men’s versus women’s reproductive success  and whilMeta-analysis can be a valuable tool in understanding overall patterns in evolutionarily relevant traits, both across and within species. Jennions and colleagues  noted theither mating or reproductive outcomes, despite both being relevant to testing the theories above. r = 0.24]). Across 33 non-industrialized societies, r = 0.19). In contrast, Xu and colleagues (r = 0.22). Across all of their analyses , Grebe and colleagues found no significant differences between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ samples, but their ‘non-Western’ grouping for the relevant analysis only included a low fertility population in 21st Century China. To our knowledge, facial masculinity, voice pitch, and 2D:4D have never been meta-analyzed in relation to mating and/or reproduction.In terms of the current topic, previous studies explicitly testing the relationships between masculine traits and fitness outcomes have been overwhelmingly conducted in low fertility samples and have produced a mixture of positive, negative, and null results e.g. . This crlleagues  reportedlleagues  meta-anaboth mating and reproductive outcomes, in both high and low fertility samples. By including multiple traits, a broad search strategy, and considering high and low fertility samples both separately and together, we can ascertain whether the current scientific evidence base provides plausible support for the sexual selection of masculine traits in humans. By further testing the publication status of each effect , we can also evaluate the evidence for publication bias, since this is known to artificially inflate effects in diverse literatures.The present article therefore searched widely for published and unpublished data to meta-analyze the relationships between six main masculine traits in men  and Mating measures included behavioral measures such as number of sexual partners, number of marital spouses, and age at first sexual intercourse. Since increased mating effort is an additional possible route to increased reproductive output, we also included mating attitudes, such as preferences for casual sex. Reproductive measures included: fertility measures, such as number of children/grandchildren born and age at the birth of the first child; and reproductive success measures, that is number of offspring surviving childhood. Since offspring mortality is a measure specifically of offspring viability, we included this as a separate measure .A systematic search was initially carried out between November 2017 and February 2018 using the databases PsycINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science; the searches were saved and search alerts ensured inclusion of subsequently published studies. Search terms are given in Box 1. AND  AND (human OR man OR men OR participant*).Studies were also retrieved through cross-referencing, citation searches/alerts, and by asking for data on social media. The systematic search generated 2,221 results, including duplicates, and a further approximately 300 articles were found by other means. After scanning titles and abstracts, 280 articles/dissertations were reviewed in full. Studies submitted up to 1 May 2020 were accepted. Eligible studies included at least one of the following predictors: facial masculinity, body masculinity , 2D:4D, voice pitch, height, or testosterone levels. The following outcome measures were included:- Mating domain: global sociosexuality . If key variables were collected but the relevant analyses were not reported, we contacted authors to request effect sizes or raw data. If data were reported in more than one study, we selected the analysis with the larger sample size or which included appropriate control variables, such as age. Studies using measures that were ambiguous and/or not comparable to measures used in other studies were excluded . Twin studies where participants were sampled as pairs, population level studies, and studies analyzing both sexes together were also excluded, as well as articles that were not written in English or Swedish as we were not sufficiently fluent in other languages to conduct unbiased searching and extraction. Multiple measures from the same study were retained if they met the other criteria.r as our effect size measure and effect sizes not given as r were converted (see k = 28). Excluding those effects from the analyses had no effect on any of the results. Twenty-nine percent of all observations  were double coded by the first author >2 months apart. Intracoder agreement was 97%. For coding decisions, see We chose Pearson’s In total, 96 studies were selected  Hartl etmetafor package .The analyses were conducted on three levels for both predictor traits and outcomes . For pretotal fitness level. Given the widespread use of mating measures as proxies of reproductive outcomes, it is imperative where possible to test  both mating and reproduction, to ensure that we are not relying on proxies that do not measure what they are assumed to measure. The domain level therefore divided outcomes into the mating domain, the reproductive domain, and the offspring mortality domain and analyzed them separately. The last level, the measures level, further divided mating and reproduction into their separate measures , which were analyzed as subgroups.For the outcomes, mating, reproduction, and offspring mortality were first analyzed together at the attitudes and mating behaviors, as high mating success may result from increased mating efforts (reflected in favorable attitudes towards short-term mating) and/or encountering more mating opportunities (reflected in mating behaviors) without actively seeking them . It is therefore necessary to divide these two measures.The mating domain comprised mating rate  and is not directly related to offspring numbers. Offspring mortality was therefore analyzed as a separate domain. As there were too few observations of offspring mortality to test predictor traits separately, this outcome was only analyzed at the global masculinity level.The reproductive measures, fertility (number of offspring) and reproductive success (number of surviving offspring), are closely related but were also analyzed separately in subgroup analyses. Offspring mortality, on the other hand, was usually indexed by mortality all samples, and the two sample types low fertility and high fertility.In addition to analyzing all samples together, we also analyzed low and high fertility samples separately to assess whether results were robust in both types of populations. We used a cut-off of three or more children per woman on average within that sample, which roughly corresponds to samples with vs without widespread access to contraception . Samplesoverall analyses tested global masculinity as a predictor of total fitness, as well as the three domains of mating, reproduction, and offspring mortality, separately, across all samples. In our main analyses, we analyzed masculinity at the trait level, in relation to the two outcome domains mating and reproduction. The following subgroup analyses considered low and high fertility samples separately, in addition to also dividing outcomes into their respective measures .The analysis structure was therefore as summarized in effects were published, not the study as whole. The analysis can therefore detect evidence of any tendency for significant results to be ‘written up’ while nonsignificant ones are not, whether this bias occurs between or within manuscripts. We ran moderation analyses both for outcome domains and outcome measures . For each masculine trait, we also conducted trait-specific moderation analyses , mating measure type (attitudes vs behaviors), reproductive measure type (fertility vs reproductive success), sample type (low vs high fertility), low fertility sample type (student vs non-student), high fertility sample type , ethnicity, marriage system, publication status (published vs not published effect), peer review status (peer reviewed vs not peer reviewed), sexual orientation, transformation of variables, conversion of effect sizes, age control, and inclusion of other control variables. Note that since we included many non-published effects from studies that were published, ‘publication status’ referred to whether particular the particular each category of the moderator needed observations from at least three samples from at least two studies; in many cases, there were not enough observations to test for moderators.Analyses sometimes included more than one observation from the same study/sample. In all analyses, therefore, effect sizes were clustered both by sample and by study. For all analyses, only relationships with a minimum of three independent samples from a minimum of two separate studies were analyzed. For moderation analyses, this meant that trait-general moderation analyses of outcome domains only . When we divided the outcome measures into their three domains, the positive  associations with global masculinity remained significant for mating, but not for reproduction or offspring mortality . While the effect was thus only significant for mating, the differences between effects were not significant, but we note that sample sizes differed considerably between domains.In the initial overall analyses, global masculinity was weakly but significantly associated with greater total fitness  ; for complete results, see r = 0.133, 95% CI: , q = 0.001; r = 0.132, 95% CI: , q = 0.002; r = 0.093, 95% CI: , q = 0.001; r = 0.057, 95% CI: , q = 0.002; r = 0.080, 95% CI: , q = 0.117). The effect for 2D:4D was also nonsignificant , and moderation analyses showed that this was the only trait that showed a significantly smaller effect size than the strongest predictor, body masculinity .This set of analyses tested the prediction that individual masculine traits are positively associated with mating. In terms of the overall mating domain (i.e. mating attitudes and behaviors combined), all masculine traits showed the predicted positive relationships with mating, and the effects were significant for all traits except for facial masculinity and 2D:4D . Some ofk = 4 for each trait). The other four traits had only been measured in one high fertility sample each, and the main analyses thus contained almost exclusively low fertility samples. We further compared low fertility samples which were predominantly students with other low fertility samples as part of our moderation analyses where possible, that is for body masculinity, voice pitch, height, and testosterone. For body masculinity, student samples showed a significantly stronger effect than non-student samples for mating behaviors only  but otherwise we found no differences  came from low fertility samples. Moderation analyses of sample type could only be run for body masculinity and height; neither was significant, although in both cases, the effect sizes observed in the main analyses were significant only for low fertility, and not the less numerous high fertility samples  and tested further potential control variables and trait-specific moderators. Results of subgroup analyses can be viewed in r = 0.142, 95% CI: , q = 0.001, height: r = 0.054, 95% CI: , q = 0.008) but not attitudes. Voice pitch was significantly related to mating behaviors  but was not measured in combination with mating attitudes. Testosterone levels showed near identical effects for both mating attitudes and behaviors .Type of mating measure (attitudes vs behaviors) was never a significant moderator. However, for both body masculinity and height, there were significant effects for mating behaviors . Associations for 2D:4D were weaker in non-white/mixed ethnicity samples compared to white samples , and stronger where variables had been transformed to approximate normality compared to when they had not been transformed . Similarly, associations for testosterone levels were also stronger for normality-transformed variables , and weaker in gay/mixed sexuality samples compared to in heterosexual samples .No trait-general moderator consistently changed the pattern of the associations (Table 3). Body masculinity effects were stronger in studies where age had not been controlled for compared to where it had been controlled for . Effects for rated body masculinity were significantly stronger than for indices taken from body measurements . For 2D:4D, studies that had measured digit ratios three times – rather than twice or an unknown number of times – showed significantly stronger effects .For trait-specific moderators, significant moderation was seen for r = 0.143, 95% CI: , q = 0.001; B = –0.107, p = 0.005, q = 0.023).In this set of analyses, we tested the hypothesis that individual masculine traits positively predict reproduction. As The majority (77 %) of observations of reproduction were from high fertility samples. Moderation analyses of low versus high fertility samples could only be conducted for 2D:4D and height; effect sizes did not differ significantly between sample types. Comparing types of high fertility samples  for 2D:4D and height did not show any differences in effect sizes see . It was Visual inspection of funnel plots see  suggesteResults of subgroup analyses can be viewed in r = 0.130, 95% CI: , q = 0.002; five out of six samples high fertility) while the somewhat larger effect on reproductive success was not. For 2D:4D, there was a significant effect for reproductive success  but not for fertility.Moderation analyses (where possible) showed no evidence that the effects of masculinity traits on fertility differed from the effects on reproductive success. However, for body masculinity, the effect on fertility was significant , and effects for height were stronger in gay/mixed sexuality samples than heterosexual samples .Similarly, for mating, no trait-general or trait-specific moderators had any consistent effects on the results. Body masculinity effects were stronger where effect sizes had been converted to Pearson’s Moderation analyses of domain type (mating versus reproduction) for each trait showed no significant differences, although height and testosterone levels had weaker associations with reproduction than mating while body masculinity showed the opposite pattern. There were generally far fewer observations for reproductive measures, so this nonsignificant analysis may reflect lack of power. For facial masculinity, voice pitch, and 2D:4D, effect sizes for global mating and reproductive measures were near identical.k = 371; reproductive domain k = 81; offspring mortality domain k = 22).We conducted the first comprehensive meta-analysis of the relationships between men’s masculine traits and outcomes related to mating and reproduction. Various proposed  hypotheses suggest that more masculine men should show increased mating success (indexed by more matings and/or preferences for short-term mating), increased reproductive output (indexed by fertility and/or reproductive success), and/or lower offspring mortality. Our results showed partial support for these predictions. Global masculinity  significantly predicted effects in the mating domain, but not the reproductive domain or the offspring mortality domain. When we analyzed each masculine trait separately, all traits except facial masculinity and 2D:4D significantly predicted effects in the mating domain, where similarly strong associations were seen for body masculinity, voice pitch, and testosterone levels, and a weaker correlation was seen for height. In terms of the reproductive domain, the only significant predictor was body masculinity. It was not possible to analyze offspring mortality at the specific predictor level owing to a severe lack of relevant data from which to draw conclusions  are associated with (largely self-reported) mating outcomes in low fertility samples, we cannot draw any clear conclusions regarding mating success in high fertility samples. Similarly, although we are confident that body masculinity is associated with fertility/reproductive success in high fertility samples, we cannot draw conclusions about low fertility contexts.i. although effect sizes for mating attitudes and mating behaviors did differ for some traits , these differences were never significant, despite mating behaviors being constrained by opportunities (assuming participants report truthfully), and ii. similarly, effect sizes did sometimes differ by publication status but never significantly so; in addition, the direction of the differences was not consistent . Even if the analysis was restricted to nonpublished effects only, the association between body masculinity and both mating and reproduction would be weaker but remain significant . Overall, this suggests that researchers have not been selectively reporting larger effect sizes.More generally, our moderation analyses on outcome types and factors relating to measure quality did not yield any consistent differences between effect sizes, suggesting that the effects we do find are reasonably robust within sample type at least. Two key points to note here are that: r = 0.05 and 0.17, although they are potentially meaningful in an evolutionary context. As benchmarks for interpreting correlations, Compared to previous meta-analyses assessing associations between handgrip strength and mating outcomes , height/The first stand-out result of our analysis is that body masculinity (i.e. strength/muscularity) is the only trait in our analysis that was consistently correlated with both mating and reproductive outcomes across populations, and the effects of body masculinity on these outcomes were among the strongest in the analysis. In contrast, other aspects of masculinity  predicted mating success in low fertility samples but did not yield reproductive benefits in high fertility samples.Body masculinity is therefore the trait where we have the most compelling evidence that selection is currently happening within naturally fertile populations - and from that, can infer that selection likely took place in prior eras as well. As such, our results are consistent with the argument that dimorphisms in strength and muscle mass are sexually selected. Overall, since traits such as body size, strength, and muscularity are associated with formidability, our findings are consistent with the male-male competition hypothesis. In species with male intrasexual competition, males tend to evolve to become larger, stronger, and more formidable than females, as they are in humans. Some authors argue that male-male violence has influenced human evolution , and malIt is of course possible that different selection pressures may have contributed to the evolution of different masculine traits. Male-male competition for resources and mates, female choice, and intergroup violence are all plausible, non-mutually exclusive explanations . In thisr = 0.08), it was not significantly different from zero, suggesting more variability in effects. Furthermore, the effect of facial masculinity on mating (such as it was) was largely driven by mating attitudes and was close to zero for mating behaviors, suggesting that men’s facial masculinity exerts virtually no influence on mating when moderated by female choice. Similarly, the influence of facial masculinity on fertility in high fertility samples was non-existent (r = 0.00). Although the relationship with reproductive success appeared stronger, this was based on only two samples. This is, all together, doubly striking because although voice pitch, height, and testosterone levels did not predict reproductive outcomes, they did all relate to mating in the expected direction. Facial masculinity is ergo an outlier in being so entirely unrelated to mating success in our data, while subject to so large a literature assuming the opposite.Considerable attention has been given in the literature to the hypothesis that masculinity in men’s facial structure is an indicator of heritable immunocompetence (i.e. good genes), which should then be associated with greater mating and reproductive success. While we find that the effect of facial masculinity on mating was similar in size to that of other traits  are a modern anomaly only found in industrialized populations, as suggested by Scott and colleagues , and as One key observation regarding our dataset is that it shows a rather ‘bimodal’ distribution between a large number of studies sampling (predominantly English-speaking) students on one hand, and a cluster of studies sampling foragers, horticulturalists, and other subsistence farmers (predominantly from just two continents) on the other. Where it was possible to compare student vs non-student/mixed samples within low fertility populations, and traditional vs industrialized high fertility samples, we generally did not find any differences. Likewise, where it was possible to compare monogamous and formally polygynous cultures, we also found no differences. This is despite evidence that monogamy actually changes selection pressures on human men . Therefok = 5, n = 143), which prevents us from drawing firm conclusions regarding the relationship between voice pitch and reproductive outcomes.As noted above, we found that voice pitch, height, and testosterone levels were associated with (largely self-reported) mating success in mostly low fertility populations, but not with actual reproductive fitness in high fertility populations. A caveat here is that effect sizes for voice pitch and reproduction were similar in strength to effect sizes for body masculinity, but we note that this analysis had the smallest sample size of our whole analysis  mating measures can be used as reliable indicators of likely ancestral fitness when considering the current evidence base. Since reproductive outcomes – for good reason – are not considered meaningful fitness measures in populations with widespread contraception use, we typically test fitness outcomes in industrialized populations using mating measures such as sociosexual attitudes and casual sexual encounters. This is done under the assumption that such measures index mating strategies that ancestrally would have increased men’s offspring numbers. However, if mating outcomes  measured in low fertility populations truly index reproductive outcomes in naturally fertile contexts, we would expect traits that predict mating to also predict reproduction on average across samples (notwithstanding the diversity in norms/reproductive behaviors across high fertility samples). We do not, however, have evidence that this is generally the case. Our findings therefore raise the question of whether these widely used measurements are truly valid proxies of what we purport to be measuring.Our findings thus illustrate that when we attempt to test the same underlying research questions using different measurements in different populations, this may yield conclusions that are erroneous or misleading when applied outside of the studied population. We suggest, based on our analysis, that researchers could for instance consistently gather sexual partner number, age of marriage, and number/survival rates of offspring in multiple population types. Wherever possible, it is essential to use the same measurements across populations, or at least resist the temptation of applying our findings universally.A limitation of our analysis is that we only assessed linear relationships, ignoring possible curvilinear associations. There is evidence suggesting that moderate levels of masculinity might be associated with increased reproductive success see e.g. , with a If current testosterone levels index degree of masculine trait expression in men, our results might indicate that masculine men’s increased mating success is due to greater pursuit of matings - rather than reflecting female choice and/or greater competitiveness. Two caveats for interpreting our results, however (applicable both to the significant effect we observe for mating and the nonsignificant effect for reproduction), is that circulating testosterone levels i. change over the course of a man’s lifetime, peaking in early adulthood and subsequently declining , testosterone is commonly argued to motivate investment in mating effort. eclining , and ii. married , when th married , or when married . Thus, mIn summary, we used a large-scale meta-analysis of six masculine traits and their relationships with mating and reproductive outcomes to test whether such traits are currently under selection in humans. We found that all masculine traits except facial masculinity and 2D:4D were associated with significantly greater mating success. However, only body masculinity predicted higher fertility, indexed by reproductive onset, number of offspring, and grand-offspring. We further note that the mating and reproduction literature is starkly split between studying mating in predominantly student settings, and 'only' fertility in high fertility settings, which imposes constraints on both this paper and our field as a whole. We argue that our findings illustrate that when we test hypotheses about human evolution largely in industrialized populations, we risk drawing conclusions that are not supported outside of evolutionarily novel, highly niche mating and reproductive contexts. We therefore call for greater sample diversity and more homogenous measurements in future research. This paper presents a series of meta-analyses to test the plausibility of sexual selection hypotheses for the origins and/or maintenance of six sexually differentiated traits in humans, with strength/muscularity found to be significantly associated with both mating and reproduction. The authors considered both published and unpublished datasets to help account for potential publication biases that could theoretically impact meta-analysis results, which is a particular strength of this study. public reviews designed to be posted alongside the preprint for the benefit of readers; ii) feedback on the manuscript for the authors, including requests for revisions, shown below. We also include an acceptance summary that explains what the editors found interesting or important about the work.Our editorial process produces two outputs: i) Decision letter after peer review:eLife. Your article has been reviewed by 4 peer reviewers, one of whom is a member of our Board of Reviewing Editors, and the evaluation has been overseen by George Perry as the Senior Editor. The following individuals involved in review of your submission have agreed to reveal their identity: Jordan Martin (Reviewer #2); Steven Gangestad (Reviewer #3); Urszula Marcinkowska (Reviewer #4).Thank you for submitting your article "Is male dimorphism under sexual selection in humans? A meta-analysis" for consideration by The reviewers have discussed their reviews with one another, and the Reviewing Editor has drafted this to help you prepare a revised submission.The reviewers included experts from both evolutionary psychology and evolutionary anthropology, as these two approaches do not always overlap in readership. I include a list of items below that summarizes the main issues raised by the reviewers, all of whom were in agreement that this was a strong, well-written paper that would benefit from revision. However, the recommended revisions do permeate the entire manuscript.Summary Items1. Framing and introduction: The introduction should be scaled back, to arrive more quickly at the analysis part of the paper. However, this scaling should not just be a cutting process, but instead involves the most important suggested revision of the paper. In this, the authors should situate the study within a more robust theoretical framing of the problem, drawing more strongly especially from evolutionary anthropology. The reason for this is linked to the next issue, which is the degree to which we should consider the study populations in the meta-analysis to be representative of humans in general. The authors provide an excellent review, but it could be shortened a bit and exchanged for the theoretical piece. This would shift in the framing of the paper to be more of an exploration of the different patterns of data reported in this field, with more skepticism about reporting bias, rather than mainly a primary hypothesis test. The authors here have a terrific opportunity in this compiled dataset to examine if these hypotheses are actually testable (or to what extent) using available data. For example, do the observations between X and X trait hold true when excluding studies presenting this as their main hypothesis? In this way, their paper becomes more than just another manuscript of many that attempts to test extant hypotheses, and more of a critique and technical examination of the state of available data – which would be ultimately more useful across a range of disciplines. As a structural note, the authors could also divide the introduction and Discussion sections into subsections, for example when providing different hypothesis behind masculinity attractiveness.2. All reviewers suggested caution that the data in most of the analyses came from WEIRD populations, and that in specific realms  there is likely to be strong cultural variation that can bias patterns away from a stronger ancestral signal. The authors are clearly aware of this, but it is an issue used to explain results, rather than to frame expectations. In the detailed comments we each provide specific places where the authors might temper their discussion to specifically address this issue. They should also be more up front at the start in addressing how representative the meta-analysis based on these populations is likely to be of humans in general . The authors do perform an assessment of biased reporting of results, but most of this appears in the discussion and it is difficult to know if it is possible to show, using this dataset, if there is actually bias in the underlying data. If the authors reframe the manuscript as an examination of the robustness of existing data, then they can better consider the limitations of their sample and meta-analysis for informing historical selection pressures on human populations, as well as for identifying the direct and indirect targets of sexual selection. This is closely related to the limited scope of the theoretical framework presented for interpreting the data.3. The authors performed many, many statistical tests in this study, but did not perform any multiple test correction or estimate of false discovery rates. They then highlight individual tests with p-values lower than 0.05, but this is expected many times with such an analysis scheme. The authors should provide a sense of which (if any) tests are relatively unexpected by chance when considering all of these tests performed. One option would be to compute FDR q-values with the input being all p-values from all analyses conducted as part of the study . This could then focus the paper on the most robust results (if any remain standing), which links to items #1 and #2 about reframing the manuscript in terms of the utility of current data to speak to the issue of male dimorphism, and shifting more emphasis to some of the potential biases inherent in the datasets.Line by line items and individual figure and table requests– Line 29: Higher variance in male reproduction and a surplus of reproductively available males seems to be a true statement mainly with respect to mammals. The references are about humans and non-human primates, so this should be specified here.– Line 42: I suggest underlining caution when interpreting results of 2d:4d and sexual reproduction studies, as very often they were not replicated (as authors note by adding reference 15).– Line 60: as the previous sentence is a long one  I would maybe rephrase the "…such putative associations…" to reiterate which associations the authors meant.– Line 67: "better quality, more viable offspring." as I learnt from experience, readers from fields other than human biology/ecology often are put off by saying offspring can be of better or worse quality. I suggest adding a short description, of what does a good quality offspring mean.– Line 69: shouldn't there be "what" instead of "which"?– Line 79: although there are citations here, I still wonder about the logic that masculinity should be linked to "health", broadly construed. There are many reasons why poor "health" might be linked to masculinity, for example through lifestyle choices or the social context of masculine performance. I would appreciate more nuance here. Are there specifically studies that examine "health" and masculinity in which lifestyle and diet, for example, are comparable? If those cited here qualify, then that should be specified.– Line 80: authors could add here some of the cross-cultural studies showing women's mixed preferences for facial masculinity .– Line 104: I suggest splitting the paragraph around line 104. The previous part describes the sexy-sons hypothesis, while sentences after line 104 focus on other explanations and possible negative correlates of pronounced sexual dimorphism in men. I also believe that explaining more in-depth the trade-off that women face when judging sexual dimorphism could be useful in the introduction (now there are just two sentences on the putative negative correlates of masculinity).– Line 123: "In societies without effective contraception, reproduction can be measured directly in terms of offspring numbers and/or offspring survival." I understand the logic here, but at the end of the day everything about human behavior is culturally mediated. Humans understand the relationship between sex and children, and so contraception is only part of the equation; if it is societally acceptable or encouraged to have children, then more children will be had – irrespective of the availability of contraception. Similarly, if there are reasons not to have children but contraception is not available, humans deploy cultural means to moderate fertility. Many societies are also in the midst of a demographic transition, as these ideas (and access to contraception) are in the midst of changing across one generation to the next. Furthermore, how representative are "high fertility" and "low fertility" populations, if there is so much underlying cultural and individual variation in reproductive choices? These are all just thoughts I had while reading the paper that could potentially feed into an expanded discussion that draws in more work from evolutionary anthropology.– Line 141: "Lastly, a meta-analysis of 16 effects by Grebe et al., (57) showed that men with high testosterone levels invested more in mating effort, indexed by mating with more partners and showing greater interest in casual sex (r = 0.22)."I appreciate the authors' comments on confounding within- vs between-individual T effects on mating behavior in the discussion, but it would also be useful here to emphasize that these findings are for circulating levels of testosterone, to avoid readers assuming this study clearly demonstrated between-individual effects.– Line 142: "testosterone levels" measured how/when?– Line 155: "We make no attempt to evaluate the hypotheses described above against each other."This statement should probably be deleted as it seems contradicted by the claim in the discussion that "our findings could be interpreted as lending support to the male-male competition hypothesis".– Line 207: "Studies using measures that were ambiguous and/or not comparable to measures used in other studies were excluded." Please provide an example of what such a measure would be.– Line 214: "Where effect sizes for non-significant results were not stated in the paper and could not be obtained, an effect size of 0 was assigned." Please state here how many studies were affected by this decision.– Line 273: "We used a cut-off of three or more children per woman on average within that sample, which roughly corresponds to samples with vs without widespread access to contraception." It would be helpful to include a raw data plot in the supplement showing this pattern visually to better justify the analytic decision. My apologies if I happened to miss this.– Line 275: a reference could be useful here to back up the cut-off point if one exists.– Line 281: "high" is missing before fertility.– Line 296: authors could provide possible options for" publication status" and "peer-review status"– Line 299: calling this variable of a study "quality" infers that one approach is better than the other (while I don't think that is the case).– Line 395: "For 2D:4D, all samples except one were from low fertility populations. Although the relationship with the mating domain was significant (but very weak), this was no longer significant when excluding non-significant effect sizes not reported in the paper, where we had assigned an effect size of 0." Is this just a power issue?– Line 494: missing r for the weak association.– Line 495: would it be possible to add here a number/rate/percentage showing that there was much more missing data in the "offspring mortality" analyses than there was in other models?– Line 555: and also visible in the positive correlation of facial masculinity preference with Health and HDI Indexes found in Marcinkowska et al., 2019.– Line 556: "A limitation of our analysis is that we only assessed linear relationships, ignoring possible curvilinear associations… However, if such results indicate that greater-than-average levels of masculinity are associated with peak fitness/attractiveness, we would still expect to see positive, albeit weak, linear relationships." I sincerely appreciate the authors making this point in their discussion. However, they should also consider that some populations may be at an evolutionary equilibrium with regard to the measured traits, in which case we would expect null main effects accompanied by quadratic effects (i.e. stabilizing selection). In general, more attention is needed to selection on not only the mean phenotype within a population, but also its variance.– Lande, R., and Arnold, S. J. (1983). The measurement of selection on correlated characters. Evolution, 1210-1226.– Stinchcombe, J. R., Agrawal, A. F., Hohenlohe, P. A., Arnold, S. J., and Blows, M. W. (2008). Estimating nonlinear selection gradients using quadratic regression coefficients: double or nothing? Evolution, 62(9), 2435-2440.– In a paragraph starting at 563 authors could add how the T was measured in the listed studies, to further back up the idea that current T might not be related to current masculinity.– Line 588: "Wherever possible, we thus need to use the same measurements across populations, or at least resist the temptation of applying our findings universally."– Line 589: maybe here authors could add what these variables could be according to their exhaustive analysis.– Line 595: "higher fertility." as measured by …– Line 598: typo, should be "evolutionarily". Also, great point. Also, the reproductive context is niche , not just the mating context.Figures– Figure 1: This is a very helpful figure for the reader. I would consider using a slightly smaller indentation, though. Please also note that the figure is quite low resolution in the main text, if you were not already aware.– Figure 3: This forest plot is very helpful. I would encourage the authors to include more forest plots for other meaningful effects in the paper, as they will be of much greater relevance to the typical reader than the multiple, large funnel plots, which are important but could just as well be placed in the supplement and referenced from the main text.Tables– I am curious why Table 1 and 2 are presented as separate tables. It is a very long section in this article, and structuring it as clear as possible will be very helpful.– Table 5: Please bold the checks to make them easier to see. Currently, the Xs stand out much more than the checks. Also, I would consider using a different color scheme to aid colorblind readers, as well as including the direction of effect change (i.e. + or -) next to the checks with the reference categories indicated in the footnote.– Is there a reason why the authors did not discuss the moderation effects from Table 5 in the Discussion section?eLife. Your revised article has been evaluated by George Perry (Senior Editor) and a Reviewing Editor.Thank you for resubmitting your work entitled "A meta-analysis of the association between male dimorphism and fitness outcomes in humans" for further consideration by While I do find that your manuscript has been improved and you have done some solid work in addressing many reviewer comments, I (speaking as a Senior Editor) have some concerns on several points that I do not feel were properly addressed, and yet that I consider fundamental. I give an overview of these comments in the following, and we offer you the opportunity to address these comments robustly in a revision, or to consider submitting your manuscript to another journal. In addition, several comments shared by the Reviewing Editor who handled your manuscript, Jessica Thompson, are below.Senior Editor comments:1. This is a passage from essential revision #1 from the previous decision letter:"This would shift in the framing of the paper to be more of an exploration of the different patterns of data reported in this field, with more skepticism about reporting bias, rather than mainly a primary hypothesis test. The authors here have a terrific opportunity in this compiled dataset to examine if these hypotheses are actually testable (or to what extent) using available data. For example, do the observations between X and X trait hold true when excluding studies presenting this as their main hypothesis? In this way, their paper becomes more than just another manuscript of many that attempts to test extant hypotheses, and more of a critique and technical examination of the state of available data – which would be ultimately more useful across a range of disciplines."In my view, two of the most essential parts of this point was not accomplished in the revision. One, for a shift to a different type of paper that one necessarily aiming to draw biological conclusions. Two, for skepticism related to reporting bias .2. Related to FDR q-values. Thank you for providing these in the revision. But how was this analysis performed? It is surprising that the q-values are as low as they are being reported, considering the large number of tests performed. I think that the most conservative approach should be used here , given the implications and the large number of tests performed. Summary Items1. Framing and introduction: The introduction should be scaled back, to arrive more quickly at the analysis part of the paper. However, this scaling should not just be a cutting process, but instead involves the most important suggested revision of the paper. In this, the authors should situate the study within a more robust theoretical framing of the problem, drawing more strongly especially from evolutionary anthropology. The reason for this is linked to the next issue, which is the degree to which we should consider the study populations in the meta-analysis to be representative of humans in general. The authors provide an excellent review, but it could be shortened a bit and exchanged for the theoretical piece. This would shift in the framing of the paper to be more of an exploration of the different patterns of data reported in this field, with more skepticism about reporting bias, rather than mainly a primary hypothesis test. The authors here have a terrific opportunity in this compiled dataset to examine if these hypotheses are actually testable (or to what extent) using available data. For example, do the observations between X and X trait hold true when excluding studies presenting this as their main hypothesis? In this way, their paper becomes more than just another manuscript of many that attempts to test extant hypotheses, and more of a critique and technical examination of the state of available data – which would be ultimately more useful across a range of disciplines. As a structural note, the authors could also divide the introduction and Discussion sections into subsections, for example when providing different hypothesis behind masculinity attractiveness.2. All reviewers suggested caution that the data in most of the analyses came from WEIRD populations, and that in specific realms  there is likely to be strong cultural variation that can bias patterns away from a stronger ancestral signal. The authors are clearly aware of this, but it is an issue used to explain results, rather than to frame expectations. In the detailed comments we each provide specific places where the authors might temper their discussion to specifically address this issue. They should also be more up front at the start in addressing how representative the meta-analysis based on these populations is likely to be of humans in general . The authors do perform an assessment of biased reporting of results, but most of this appears in the discussion and it is difficult to know if it is possible to show, using this dataset, if there is actually bias in the underlying data. If the authors reframe the manuscript as an examination of the robustness of existing data, then they can better consider the limitations of their sample and meta-analysis for informing historical selection pressures on human populations, as well as for identifying the direct and indirect targets of sexual selection. This is closely related to the limited scope of the theoretical framework presented for interpreting the data.can actually show, and the need to consider diversity (or lack of) within both high and low fertility samples. Based on their suggestions above and line by line comments below we have done the following:We address points 1 and 2 together as they both concern framing and focus of the paper. We thank the reviewers for raising the key point around the importance of discussing what the data Added more subheadings throughout– Trimmed down the theoretical discussion in the introduction to make space for other points– Expanded on the diversity in low fertility samples in the introduction– Clarified the importance in considering how predictions regarding adaptations would play out in low vs high fertility samples in the introduction and explicitly reporting the high vs low fertility sample results in their own sub-sections within the results. We also create an explicit focus on this point and the problem with lacking mating data in high fertility samples in particular, in the discussion.– More explicitly noted our analysis of publication status in the introduction in order to comment on the results – Added a summary of sample types in the Results, which breaks down samples beyond the simply high and low fertility distinction, and discussed the implications in Discussion.Regarding the suggestion made by some reviewers that we are unduly accepting of our overall results (and their largely null direction), we would note that although one author (LB) is a known long-standing sceptic of the immunocompetence hypothesis, all authors considered it plausible at the start of this investigation that positive associations would be found for most traits with both mating success and fertility and our conclusions are based entirely on the results we found. Furthermore, our high fertility samples are in fact more diverse than the low fertility data (which is largely students) and as such the null results regarding most traits and fertility are arguably the more convincing.or African and Latin American ‘small scale societies’, while largely ignoring other populations.We believe that we have now produced a paper which answers both the question we began with (is there evidence that masculine traits predict enhanced RS and/or mating success) and which considers more carefully the challenges arising from structural imbalances in the literature regarding the tendency in our field to collect data from either students We believe these changes have improved the paper and hope that they will prove satisfactory.3. The authors performed many, many statistical tests in this study, but did not perform any multiple test correction or estimate of false discovery rates. They then highlight individual tests with p-values lower than 0.05, but this is expected many times with such an analysis scheme. The authors should provide a sense of which (if any) tests are relatively unexpected by chance when considering all of these tests performed. One option would be to compute FDR q-values with the input being all p-values from all analyses conducted as part of the study . This could then focus the paper on the most robust results (if any remain standing), which links to items #1 and #2 about reframing the manuscript in terms of the utility of current data to speak to the issue of male dimorphism, and shifting more emphasis to some of the potential biases inherent in the datasets.We have used q values as the reviewers have suggested and focused on the remaining significant results. The overall pattern of results does not change much; the relationship between 2D:4D and mating success is no longer significant, but body masculinity remains the key trait associated with both mating and reproductive outcomes.Line by line items and individual figure and table requests– Line 29: Higher variance in male reproduction and a surplus of reproductively available males seems to be a true statement mainly with respect to mammals. The references are about humans and non-human primates, so this should be specified here.We now specify this refers to humans and non-human primates (now on line 30).– Line 42: I suggest underlining caution when interpreting results of 2d:4d and sexual reproduction studies, as very often they were not replicated (as authors note by adding reference 15).Do the reviewers mean sexual dimorphism here? If so, we agree and thus cited reference 14 (line 43).– Line 60: as the previous sentence is a long one  I would maybe rephrase the "…such putative associations…" to reiterate which associations the authors meant.This phrase has now gone due to trimmed theoretical sections.– Line 67: "better quality, more viable offspring." as I learnt from experience, readers from fields other than human biology/ecology often are put off by saying offspring can be of better or worse quality. I suggest adding a short description, of what does a good quality offspring mean.We appreciate this sensitivity check and have replaced ‘better quality, more viable offspring’ with ‘healthier and more viable offspring, who are more likely to survive’ (line 63).– Line 69: shouldn't there be "what" instead of "which"?This phrase has now gone due to trimmed theoretical sections.– Line 79: although there are citations here, I still wonder about the logic that masculinity should be linked to "health", broadly construed. There are many reasons why poor "health" might be linked to masculinity, for example through lifestyle choices or the social context of masculine performance. I would appreciate more nuance here. Are there specifically studies that examine "health" and masculinity in which lifestyle and diet, for example, are comparable? If those cited here qualify, then that should be specified.We agree with the reviewer that the proposed association between masculinity and health is very complex, and it is indeed a claim frequently contested in the literature. We have expanded on that point in our reworked introduction. Our aim here, however, is not to evaluate the evidence for or against this claim, but rather to describe it as one of the mechanisms that have been proposed as an explanation of how selection may act on masculine traits, whilst acknowledging to the reader that it is indeed contested. As such, this passage is intentionally brief (lines 72-74).– Line 80: authors could add here some of the cross-cultural studies showing women's mixed preferences for facial masculinity .See the previous comment (lines 72-74). This point, with references, is also raised in the discussion (lines 614-618).– Line 104: I suggest splitting the paragraph around line 104. The previous part describes the sexy-sons hypothesis, while sentences after line 104 focus on other explanations and possible negative correlates of pronounced sexual dimorphism in men. I also believe that explaining more in-depth the trade-off that women face when judging sexual dimorphism could be useful in the introduction (now there are just two sentences on the putative negative correlates of masculinity).We have split this paragraph after ‘which should in turn result in more offspring.’ And have briefly expanded on the quality-care trade off (lines 94-107).– Line 123: "In societies without effective contraception, reproduction can be measured directly in terms of offspring numbers and/or offspring survival." I understand the logic here, but at the end of the day everything about human behavior is culturally mediated. Humans understand the relationship between sex and children, and so contraception is only part of the equation; if it is societally acceptable or encouraged to have children, then more children will be had – irrespective of the availability of contraception. Similarly, if there are reasons not to have children but contraception is not available, humans deploy cultural means to moderate fertility. Many societies are also in the midst of a demographic transition, as these ideas (and access to contraception) are in the midst of changing across one generation to the next. Furthermore, how representative are "high fertility" and "low fertility" populations, if there is so much underlying cultural and individual variation in reproductive choices? These are all just thoughts I had while reading the paper that could potentially feed into an expanded discussion that draws in more work from evolutionary anthropology.We have now expanded on the diversity of ‘high fertility’/non-contracepting populations in the introduction , and have deleted this sentence.– Line 141: "Lastly, a meta-analysis of 16 effects by Grebe et al., (57) showed that men with high testosterone levels invested more in mating effort, indexed by mating with more partners and showing greater interest in casual sex (r = 0.22)."I appreciate the authors' comments on confounding within- vs between-individual T effects on mating behavior in the discussion, but it would also be useful here to emphasize that these findings are for circulating levels of testosterone, to avoid readers assuming this study clearly demonstrated between-individual effects.We’ve added that the Grebe et al., study used circulating testosterone (lines 159-160).– Line 142: "testosterone levels" measured how/when?We now specify that testosterone was assayed by blood or saliva (line 160). The authors of the paper mention that sampling time of day was recorded, but this information is not given anywhere.– Line 155: "We make no attempt to evaluate the hypotheses described above against each other."This statement should probably be deleted as it seems contradicted by the claim in the discussion that "our findings could be interpreted as lending support to the male-male competition hypothesis".We have cut this as part of our rewritten introduction more explicitly focusing on whether the effects exist, at all, in high v low fertility populations.– Line 207: "Studies using measures that were ambiguous and/or not comparable to measures used in other studies were excluded." Please provide an example of what such a measure would be.We have added examples of such measures (lines 234-236).– Line 214: "Where effect sizes for non-significant results were not stated in the paper and could not be obtained, an effect size of 0 was assigned." Please state here how many studies were affected by this decision.This has now been stated (line 243).– Line 273: "We used a cut-off of three or more children per woman on average within that sample, which roughly corresponds to samples with vs without widespread access to contraception." It would be helpful to include a raw data plot in the supplement showing this pattern visually to better justify the analytic decision. My apologies if I happened to miss this.The rationale for the choice of this cut-off  was to distinguish between populations with and without widespread access to contraception; the global fertility rate is around 2.5, and most industrialized countries have a fertility rate around or below 2 children/woman, whereas natural fertility populations typically have a fertility rate around 4 or higher (according to the World Bank Data: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN). Additionally, industrialized, contracepting populations typically show a decline from a fertility rate above or around 3 to between 1.5-2 when contraception become widely available. A cut-off of 3 children/woman was therefore judged as appropriate to distinguish between low and high fertility populations. We have added a reference to justify this decision (line 302).– Line 275: a reference could be useful here to back up the cut-off point if one exists.We have added a reference the World Bank data also cited above (line 302).– Line 281: "high" is missing before fertility.This has been added (line 309).– Line 296: authors could provide possible options for" publication status" and "peer-review status"This has been added, along with a clarification that publication status refers to publication status of a particular effect, not status of the study it was taken from (lines 324-329).– Line 299: calling this variable of a study "quality" infers that one approach is better than the other (while I don't think that is the case).We have deleted this.– Line 395: "For 2D:4D, all samples except one were from low fertility populations. Although the relationship with the mating domain was significant (but very weak), this was no longer significant when excluding non-significant effect sizes not reported in the paper, where we had assigned an effect size of 0." Is this just a power issue?p = 0.049), thus becomes nonsignificant when those effects are excluded. However, this association does not survive corrections for multiple comparisons  so this difference is no longer relevant.Yes – including the assigned effect sizes of.0, the association is just significant .– Line 555: and also visible in the positive correlation of facial masculinity preference with Health and HDI Indexes found in Marcinkowska et al., 2019.This has been added (lines 617-618).– Line 556: “A limitation of our analysis is that we only assessed linear relationships, ignoring possible curvilinear associations… However, if such results indicate that greater-than-average levels of masculinity are associated with peak fitness/attractiveness, we would still expect to see positive, albeit weak, linear relationships.” I sincerely appreciate the authors making this point in their discussion. However, they should also consider that some populations may be at an evolutionary equilibrium with regard to the measured traits, in which case we would expect null main effects accompanied by quadratic effects (i.e. stabilizing selection).We thank the reviewers for raising this point. We were indeed referring in part to research which found such quadratic effects regarding masculinity and offspring quality and have made the point more clearly now, as well as differentiating stabilizing selection from non-linear but still directional selection (as some have argued is the case for height). We have now expanded on this point (668-682).– In a paragraph starting at 563 authors could add how the T was measured in the listed studies, to further back up the idea that current T might not be related to current masculinity.We have noted this in order to make the point clearer that T levels were generally gathered in a manner which exacerbates the reactive T problem: “In the studies we gathered, testosterone levels were generally measured contemporaneously with mating/reproductive data collection.” (lines 697-698).– Line 588: “Wherever possible, we thus need to use the same measurements across populations, or at least resist the temptation of applying our findings universally.”– Line 589: maybe here authors could add what these variables could be according to their exhaustive analysis.We have added a preceding sentence: “We suggest, based on our analysis, that researchers could for instance consistently gather sexual partner number, age of marriage, and number/survival rates of offspring in multiple population types.” (lines 686-688).– Line 595: “higher fertility.” As measured by …This has been added (lines 713-714).– Line 598: typo, should be “evolutionarily”. Also, great point. Also, the reproductive context is niche , not just the mating context.Typo corrected; ‘reproductive contexts’ added (line 719).Figures– Figure 1: This is a very helpful figure for the reader. I would consider using a slightly smaller indentation, though. Please also note that the figure is quite low resolution in the main text, if you were not already aware.Figure 1  have been updated to a higher resolution.– Figure 3: This forest plot is very helpful. I would encourage the authors to include more forest plots for other meaningful effects in the paper, as they will be of much greater relevance to the typical reader than the multiple, large funnel plots, which are important but could just as well be placed in the supplement and referenced from the main text.Funnel plots have been moved to Supplementary files. Forest plots for all significant outcome domain associations have been added.Tables– I am curious why Table 1 and 2 are presented as separate tables. It is a very long section in this article, and structuring it as clear as possible will be very helpful.They have been combined .– Table 5: Please bold the checks to make them easier to see. Currently, the Xs stand out much more than the checks. Also, I would consider using a different color scheme to aid colorblind readers, as well as including the direction of effect change (i.e. + or -) next to the checks with the reference categories indicated in the footnote.We’re grateful for the reminder of the need to use a color deficiency friendly palette. Moderators and reference categories have been specified for all analyses. We use + and – signs to indicate direction of significant effects, and as before, crosses for nonsignificant effects. Please note that it is hard to make significant associations ‘pop out’ more without making them bigger, which leads to formatting problems in the table.– Is there a reason why the authors did not discuss the moderation effects from Table 5 in the Discussion section?We did not include non-significant moderators (other than those we explicitly planned to focus on) for brevity. We now explicitly mention all significant moderators in text for outcome domains, and for brevity, refer readers to the Supplementary files for outcome measure moderations.Senior Editor comments:1. This is a passage from essential revision #1 from the previous decision letter:"This would shift in the framing of the paper to be more of an exploration of the different patterns of data reported in this field, with more skepticism about reporting bias, rather than mainly a primary hypothesis test. The authors here have a terrific opportunity in this compiled dataset to examine if these hypotheses are actually testable (or to what extent) using available data. For example, do the observations between X and X trait hold true when excluding studies presenting this as their main hypothesis? In this way, their paper becomes more than just another manuscript of many that attempts to test extant hypotheses, and more of a critique and technical examination of the state of available data – which would be ultimately more useful across a range of disciplines."In my view, two of the most essential parts of this point was not accomplished in the revision. One, for a shift to a different type of paper that one necessarily aiming to draw biological conclusions. Two, for skepticism related to reporting bias .We thank the editor for the greater clarity regarding their thinking on this issue provided through our email exchange and we append the full email history at the end of this document for reference. We believe that the conclusion of this exchange was that a focus on concerns around publication bias “could ultimately be the leading reason for this work to be featured in a major general life sciences journal, rather than a more field-specific journal, and to become a maximally impactful paper.”On re-reading the paper we can see the advantages in more clearly spelling out the role of meta-analysis in general in this area, and have added a section starting at line 147 specifically on this . This places our paper within that broader history of using meta-analysis to more clearly test evolutionary hypotheses with regard to humans and sexual selection.eLife, we note that eLife has published prior examples of this kind of analysis. For instance, Baumelle et al.,  who tested specific hypotheses around biodiversity, and Mancini et al., (2020 https://elifesciences.org/articles/61523) who – like us – investigated which measures within a particular domain were and were not associated with a particular outcome (within neurohistology in their case). This demonstrates that theoretically driven meta-analyses of specific issues have a place within eLife alongside those that focus on methodological issues. We would also argue that a large-scale meta-analysis attempting to understand the level of selection for physical dimorphism in humans is of sufficient interest to a wide range of fields  to justify its place within a general journal such as eLife.Regarding the editor’s concern that meta-analyses addressing specific research questions are not suitable in eLife have indeed focused on publication biases, such focus was also justified by the results. As we noted in our email exchange, our results do not support an exclusive focus on this angle and, as we further noted in response to the editor’s query and as we have now included in the discussion (lines 551-555), the main results do hold when only unpublished datasets were analysed. Publication bias is not, therefore, a primary concern with this research issue.While some meta-analysis in We hope that this provides both reassurance alongside our additional engagement with the goals of meta-analysis in our introduction, including concerns that publication bias may hinder interpretation, and can satisfy on this point.2. Related to FDR q-values. Thank you for providing these in the revision. But how was this analysis performed? It is surprising that the q-values are as low as they are being reported, considering the large number of tests performed. I think that the most conservative approach should be used here , given the implications and the large number of tests performed.We believe this issue has been resolved through our email exchange, specifically:-p-values from all of the tests in the paper . We include here output from the q value computation; as is evident from this output, where q values are low this is due to p-values being very small to begin with.Our previous response by email: We did indeed run our correction for multiple comparisons in the suggested way: using all Editor’s further response: For the FDR analyses, I apologize for potentially missing the methodological statements in the text that you did indeed include all p-values into a single FDR calculation. That's great that you did do it this way.We have also added a line specifying that this was how the q-value computation was performed (lines 291-292). Supplementary Figure 7 is also included in this resubmission; we apologise that it was erroneously left out from our previous resubmission.