The efficacy of good genes sexual selection under environmental change

Martinossi‐Allibert, Ivain; Rueffler, Claus; Arnqvist, Göran; Berger, David

doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.2313

Cited by 29 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 66 publications

(86 reference statements)

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“…In addition, Martinossi‐Allibert et al . (2019 a ) recently showed that rapid environmental change can in principle result in less‐effective good‐genes sexual selection, at least in species where sexual selection takes place in small‐ to medium‐size organisms (i.e. applicable to most animal species in the wild).…”

Section: Framework For the Study Of Temperature And Sexual Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Martinossi‐Allibert et al ., 2018). Briefly, because female fitness depends on fecundity selection while male fitness depends on their ability to monopolise fertilizations within a mating patch, group size poses an upper limit for male (but not female) variance (Martinossi‐Allibert et al ., 2019 a ). By contrast, there is substantial theoretical and empirical work showing that genomic conflict between the sexes should be ameliorated in populations facing environments to which they are not adapted, hence increasing population adaptation (e.g.…”

Section: Framework For the Study Of Temperature And Sexual Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Temperature as a modulator of sexual selection

et al. 2020

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A central question in ecology and evolution is to understand why sexual selection varies so much in strength across taxa; it has long been known that ecological factors are crucial to this. Temperature is a particularly salient abiotic ecological factor that modulates a wide range of physiological, morphological and behavioural traits, impacting individuals and populations at a global taxonomic scale. Furthermore, temperature exhibits substantial temporal variation (e.g. daily, seasonally and inter‐seasonally), and hence for most species in the wild sexual selection will regularly unfold in a dynamic thermal environment. Unfortunately, studies have so far almost completely neglected the role of temperature as a modulator of sexual selection. Here, we outline the main pathways through which temperature can affect the intensity and form (i.e. mechanisms) of sexual selection, via: (i) direct effects on secondary sexual traits and preferences (i.e. trait variance, opportunity for selection and trait–fitness covariance), and (ii) indirect effects on key mating parameters, sex‐specific reproductive costs/benefits, trade‐offs, demography and correlated abiotic factors. Building upon this framework, we show that, by focusing exclusively on the first‐order effects that environmental temperature has on traits linked with individual fitness and population viability, current global warming studies may be ignoring eco‐evolutionary feedbacks mediated by sexual selection. Finally, we tested the general prediction that temperature modulates sexual selection by conducting a meta‐analysis of available studies experimentally manipulating temperature and reporting effects on the variance of male/female reproductive success and/or traits under sexual selection. Our results show a clear association between temperature and sexual selection measures in both sexes. In short, we suggest that studying the feedback between temperature and sexual selection processes may be vital to developing a better understanding of variation in the strength of sexual selection in nature, and its consequences for population viability in response to environmental change (e.g. global warming).

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Section: Framework For the Study Of Temperature And Sexual Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Framework For the Study Of Temperature And Sexual Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature as a modulator of sexual selection

et al. 2020

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“…Sexual selection can impose substantial fitness costs at the individual level, especially in low‐quality habitats (Janicke et al, ; Martinossi‐Allibert, Rueffler, Arnqvist, & Berger, ), with consequences for the dynamics of populations. We acknowledge that our study does not explicitly investigate the role of potential environmental drivers on the pattern of sexually selected traits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting patterns of sexually selected traits in Mediterranean and continental populations of European mouflon

Kavčić

Corlatti

Safner

et al. 2020

Ecology and Evolution

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The expression of sexually selected traits in highly dimorphic ungulates may be influenced by environmental quality. Variations in habitat conditions can impose different constraints on the allocation of energy resources to male life‐history traits, and possibly alter the female preferences for specific features. Here, we compared the horn growth patterns in male European mouflon Ovis aries musimon living in different habitats (Mediterranean vs. continental) but sharing a common genetic origin. We hypothesized that the expression of sexually selected traits such as horn development should be promoted in more favorable habitat conditions (i.e., Mediterranean). Using linear mixed models on data retrieved from individuals harvested under the same hunting regime, we found longer horns and greater individual variance in horn segment length in the Mediterranean population than in the continental one. Furthermore, Mediterranean rams showed no evidence of compensatory horn growth, as opposed to the continental rams. Unexpectedly, horn base circumference was greater in the continental habitat than in the Mediterranean one. The overall results suggest different patterns of investment in horns in the two populations, with seemingly stronger pressure and consequences of sexual selection on mouflon rams living in more favorable environments. Although the role of hunters' selectivity cannot be excluded a priori, our data suggest that the differences in the expression of sexually selected traits in our study populations may be influenced by environmental conditions. Because sexual selection can impose substantial fitness costs on individuals, further investigations on the trade‐offs between reproduction and survival would improve our understanding of the dynamics of mouflon populations living in different environmental conditions.

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“…Rice 1992, Chippindale et al 2001, Pischedda and Chippindale 2006, Prokop et al 2012, or on SC genetic variation, which many theoretical models on the benefits of sex assume (e.g. Manning 1984, Kodric-Brown and Brown 1987, Agrawal 2001, Siller 2001, Lorch et al 2003, Martinossi-Allibert et al 2019a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selection in males purges the mutation load on female fitness

Grieshop

Maurizio

Arnqvist

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Theory predicts that the ability of selection and recombination to purge mutation load is enhanced if selection against deleterious genetic variants operates more strongly in males than females. However, direct empirical support for this tenet is limited, perhaps because traditional quantitative genetic approaches allow dominance and intermediate-frequency polymorphisms to obscure the effects of rare and partially recessive deleterious alleles that make up the main part of a population’s mutation load. Here, we exposed the mutation load of a population of Callosobruchus maculatus seed beetles via successive generations of inbreeding, and quantified its effects by measuring heterosis – the increase in fitness upon the masking of deleterious alleles by heterozygosity – in a fully factorial sex-specific diallel cross among 16 inbred strains. Competitive lifetime reproductive success (i.e. fitness) was measured in male and female outcrossed F1s as well as inbred parental ‘selfs’, and we estimated the 4×4 male-female inbred-outbred genetic covariance matrix (G) for fitness using Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations of a custom-made general linear mixed effects model. We found that heterosis estimated in males and females was highly correlated among strains, and that heterosis was strongly negatively correlated to strains’ outcrossed breeding values for male fitness, but not female fitness. This suggests that the additive genetic variation for fitness in the males, but not females, of this population reflect the amount of (partially) recessive deleterious alleles segregating at mutation-selection balance, and that the population’s mutation load therefore has greater potential to be purged via selection in males. These findings contribute to our understanding of the prevalence of sexual reproduction in nature and the maintenance of genetic variation in fitness-related traits.Impact statementA mainstay evolutionary question has been: why do the large majority of eukaryotic species reproduce sexually if such females must spend half of their reproductive effort producing sons, which produce no offspring themselves? In principle, a lineage of a mutant asexual female that simply clones herself into daughters would grow at twice the rate of her sexual competitors (all else equal). What prevents this from being the predominant mode of reproduction throughout eukaryotes? One category of hypotheses regards the role of males in facilitating the purging of deleterious mutations from the population’s genome since very strong selection in males, unlike females, can occur in many species without direct consequence to population offspring numbers. Due to the inherent difficulties of detecting selection on segregating genetic variation, empirical evidence for this theory is limited to indirect evidence from manipulative experiments and experimental evolution studies. Here we demonstrate that the standing deleterious allelic variation in a population of the seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, is selected against strongly in males but not females. Using a fully factorial diallel cross among 16 inbred strains, we measured the degree to which fitness in the outbred offspring of those crosses improved relative to their inbred parents. This measure is known as heterosis and offers an estimate of the relative number of deleterious alleles carried among strains. We then analyzed the relationship between strains’ heterosis values and their sex-specific additive genetic breeding values for fitness, revealing the extent to which those segregating deleterious alleles are selected against in males and females. We found that strains heterosis values were strongly correlated with male fitness, but not female fitness. This demonstrates that the population’s deleterious mutations can be efficiently selected against (i.e. purged) via selection in males. This process would offer a benefit to sexual reproduction that may outweigh its costs, and therefore yields insight to the prevalence of sex in nature.

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The efficacy of good genes sexual selection under environmental change

Cited by 29 publications

References 66 publications

Temperature as a modulator of sexual selection

Temperature as a modulator of sexual selection

Contrasting patterns of sexually selected traits in Mediterranean and continental populations of European mouflon

Selection in males purges the mutation load on female fitness

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