Male harm offsets the demographic benefits of good genes
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Published version
Author(s)
Flintham, Ewan
Savolainen, Vincent
Mullon, Charles
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Sexual conflict can arise when males evolve traits that improve their mating success but in doing so harm females. By reducing female fitness, male harm can diminish offspring production in a population and even drive extinction. Current theory on harm is based on the assumption that an individual’s phenotype is solely determined by its genotype. But the expression of most sexually selected traits is also influenced by variation in biological condition (condition-dependent expression), such that individuals in better condition can express more extreme phenotypes. Here, we developed demographically explicit models of sexual conflict evolution where individuals vary in their condition. Because condition-dependent expression readily evolves for traits underlying sexual conflict, we show that conflict is more intense in populations where individuals are in better condition. Such intensified conflict reduces mean fitness and can thus generate a negative association between condition and population size. The impact of condition on demography is especially likely to be detrimental when the genetic basis of condition coevolves with sexual conflict. This occurs because sexual selection favors alleles that improve condition (the so-called good genes effect), producing feedback between condition and sexual conflict that drives the evolution of intense male harm. Our results indicate that in presence of male harm, the good genes effect in fact easily becomes detrimental to populations.
Date Issued
2023-03-07
Date Acceptance
2022-12-29
Citation
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, 2023, 120 (10), pp.1-9
ISSN
0027-8424
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Start Page
1
End Page
9
Journal / Book Title
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA
Volume
120
Issue
10
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.
This open access article is distributed under Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
This open access article is distributed under Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
Identifier
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211668120
Subjects
good genes
sexual conflict
sexual selection
Female
Male
Animals
Alleles
Genotype
Reproduction
Cell Communication
Population Density
Animals
Population Density
Cell Communication
Reproduction
Genotype
Alleles
Female
Male
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e2211668120
Date Publish Online
2023-03-02