New theory explaining the prevalence of homosexuality focuses on epigenetics

The Quarterly Review of Biology “Homosexuality as a Consequence of Epigenetically Canalized Sexual Development”

What makes this theory so compelling is how it addresses the “heritable but not at all clearly genetic” problem of explaining the very high prevalence of homosexuality in human populations. There have been other theories of homosexuality that invoke sexual antagonism, but this one seems to have the better chance of fitting the pattern.

What does this say about the evolutionary significance of homosexuality? That is not clear: our understanding of how epigenetic factors evolve is still pretty primitive.

It is awesome that QRB and The University of Chicago Press have made this article open access!