Experimental evolution reveals the power of kin selection to shape female productivity and modulate sexual conflict.

March 2021Field-collected samples Rhizoglyphus robini were collected from onions from fields in various locations from Poland (Krakόw, collected in 1998, Kwiejce, collected in 2017 and Mosina, collected in 2017 and then reared in the laboratory under standard laboratory conditions (23°C, >90% humidity) Ethics oversightNo ethical approval is needed for working with Rhizoglyphus robini Note that full information on the approval of the study protocol must also be provided in the manuscript.

Sexual conflict has extremely important consequences for various evolutionary processes including its effect on local adaptation and extinction probability during environmental change. The awareness that the intensity and dynamics of sexual conflict is highly dependent on the ecological setting of a population has grown in recent years, but much work is yet to be done. Here, we review progress in our understanding of the ecology of sexual conflict and how the environmental sensitivity of such conflict feeds back into population adaptivity and demography, which, in turn, determine a population's chances of surviving a sudden environmental change. We link two possible forms of sexual conflictintralocus and interlocus sexual conflictin an environmental context and identify major gaps in our knowledge. These include sexual conflict responses to fluctuating and oscillating environmental changes and its influence on the interplay between interlocus and intralocus sexual conflict, among others. We also highlight the need to move our investigations into more natural settings and to investigate sexual conflict dynamics in wild populations.