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Self-fertilization and inbreeding limit the scope for sexually antagonistic polymorphism

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Author

Summary, in English

Sexual antagonism occurs when there is a positive intersexual genetic correlation in trait expression but opposite fitness effects of the trait(s) in males and females. As such, it constrains the evolution of sexual dimorphism and may therefore have implications for adaptive evolution. There is currently considerable evidence for the existence of sexually antagonistic genetic variation in laboratory and natural populations, but how sexual antagonism interacts with other evolutionary phenomena is still poorly understood in many cases. Here, we explore how self-fertilization and inbreeding affect the maintenance of polymorphism for sexually antagonistic loci. We expected a priori that selfing should reduce the region of polymorphism, as inbreeding reduces the frequency of heterozygotes and speeds fixation. This expectation was supported, but although previous results suggest that the more an allele that is deleterious to one sex is dominant in that sex, the smaller the region of parameter space that will admit polymorphism, we found that this effect is weakened by self-fertilization. However, the effect of inbreeding is not strong enough to completely cancel out the effect of dominance: For a given frequency of inbreeding, it will still be the case that the more dominant the alleles are in their deleterious context, the smaller the region of parameter space in which they can exist at polymorphism.

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

723-729

Publication/Series

Journal of evolutionary biology

Volume

28

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Topic

  • Biological Sciences

Keywords

  • hermaphrodites
  • inbreeding
  • intralocus sexual conflict
  • population
  • genetics
  • sexual antagonism

Status

Published

Research group

  • Genetics of Sex Differences

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1420-9101