4.5 Article

Softness of selection and mating system interact to shape trait evolution under sexual conflict

Journal

EVOLUTION
Volume 75, Issue 10, Pages 2335-2347

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/evo.14329

Keywords

experimental evolution; gene expression; sexual conflict; sexual dimorphism; soft; hard selection; theory

Funding

  1. Swiss National Science Foundation [PZ00P3_180145, PZ00P3_161430]
  2. Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [PZ00P3_180145, PZ00P3_161430] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Sexual selection and sexual conflict are important in driving the evolution of male and female traits. Experimental evolution studies provide a powerful approach for comparing evolutionary trajectories under different treatments, such as mating systems, but clear theoretical predictions on the effects of different mating systems are lacking.
Sexual selection and sexual conflict play central roles in driving the evolution of male and female traits. Experimental evolution provides a powerful approach to study the operation of these forces under controlled environmental and demographic conditions, thereby allowing direct comparisons of evolutionary trajectories under different treatments such as mating systems. Despite the rapid progress of experimental and statistical techniques that support experimental evolution studies, we still lack clear theoretical predictions on the effects of different mating systems beyond what intuition suggests. For example, polygamy (several males and females in a mating group) and polyandry (one single female and multiple males in a mating group) have each been used as treatments that elevate sexual selection on males and sexual conflict relative to monogamy. However, polygamy and polyandry manipulations sometimes produce different evolutionary outcomes, and the precise reasons why remain elusive. In addition, the softness of selection (i.e., scale of competition within each sex) is known to affect trait evolution, and is an important factor to consider in experimental design. To date, no model has specifically investigated how the softness of selection interacts with different mating systems. Here, we try to fill these gaps by generating clear and readily testable predictions. Our set of models were designed to capture the most important life cycle events in typical experimental evolution studies, and we use simulated changes of sex-specific gene expression profiles (i.e., feminization or masculinization) to quantify trait evolution under different selection schemes. We show that interactions between the softness of selection and the mating system can produce results that have been identified as counterintuitive in previous empirical work such as polyandry producing stronger feminization than monogamy. We conclude by encouraging a stronger integration of modelling in future experimental evolution studies and pointing out remaining knowledge gaps for future theoretical work.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.5
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available