Sexually Antagonistic Coevolution for Sexual Harassment Can Act as a Barrier to Further Invasions by Parthenogenesis

The assumption of a twofold cost of sex not only complicates the maintenance of sex but also sets conditions for sexual conflict: in organisms with the twofold cost, males often sexually harass females. Sexual harassment is detrimental to female fitness and thus might help maintain sexual populations if male harassment inflicts a harsher cost on parthenogens than on sexual females (asymmetric harassment cost). However, the generality of this concept is now considered doubtful because selective harassment of parthenogens results in loss of mating opportunities for males. Using three mathematical models, I show here that sexual harassment still can impose the asymmetric cost on parthenogens. First, I apply the Lotka-Volterra model to show the degree of asymmetric harassment cost that permits sex to be maintained stably in the population. Second, using adaptive dynamics, I examine whether sexually antagonistic coevolution for sexual harassment, which occurs only in sexual populations, can promote the asymmetric harassment cost. Finally, an individual-based model, which assumes a spatial structure unlike that in the other two, demonstrates that the asymmetric evolution of harassment cost prevents further invasions of parthenogens from different patches into sexual lineages; these mechanisms may account for allopatric distributions of sexual and parthenogenetic lineages as well as the maintenance of sex.