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637 results for “Sexual selection”

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dryad40/100

Pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection increase offspring quality but impose survival costs to female field crickets

Whether sexual selection increases or decreases fitness is under ongoing debate. Sexual selection operates before and after mating. Yet, the effects of each episode of selection on individual reproductive success remain largely unexplored. We ask how disentangled pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection contribute to fitness of field crickets Gryllus bimaculatus. Treatments allowed exclusively for i) pre-copulatory selection, with males fighting and courting one female, and the resulting pair breeding monogamously, ii) post-copulatory selection, with females mating consecutively to multiple males, and iii) relaxed selection, with enforced pair monogamy. While standardizing the number of matings, we estimated a number of fitness traits across treatments and show that females experiencing sexual selection were more likely to reproduce, their offspring hatched sooner, developed faster and had higher body mass at adulthood, but females suffered survival costs. Interestingly, we found no differences in fitness of females or their offspring from pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection treatments. Our findings highlight the potential for sexual selection in enhancing indirect female fitness while concurrently imposing direct survival costs. By potentially outweighing these costs, increased offspring quality could lead to beneficial population-level consequences of sexual selection.

opencc-zeroNov 2022View details →

zenodo40/100

Evidence for stronger sexual selection in males than females using an adapted method of Bateman's classic study of Drosophila melanogaster

Bateman’s principle, originally a test of Darwin’s theoretical ideas, has since become fundamental to sexual selection theory and vital to contextualising the role of anisogamy and the operational sex ratio in sex differences in both reproductive competition and precopulatory sexual selection. Despite this, Bateman’s principle has received substantial criticism, and researchers have highlighted both statistical and methodological errors, suggesting that Bateman’s original experiment contains too much sampling bias for there to be any evidence of sexual selection. This study uses Bateman’s original method as a template, accounting for two fundamental flaws in his original experiments, (i) viability effects and (ii) a lack of mating behaviour observation. Experimental populations of Drosophila melanogaster consisted of wild-type focal individuals and non-focal individuals established by backcrossing the brown eye (bw-) eye-colour marker. Mating assays included direct observation of mating behaviour and subsequently, total number of offspring were counted, to obtain measures of mating success, reproductive success, and standardised variance measures based on Bateman’s principle. The results provide observational support for Bateman’s principle, particularly that (i) males had significantly more variation in number of mates compared to females and (ii) males had significantly more individual variation in total number of offspring. We also find significantly steeper Bateman gradient for males compared to females, suggesting that sexual selection is operating more intensely in males. However, female remating was limited, providing the opportunity for future study to further explore female reproductive success in correlation with higher levels of remating.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2023View details →

dryad40/100

Data from: Vascularization underlies differences in sexually selected skin coloration in a wild primate

Male reproductive competition can select for condition-dependent, conspicuous traits that signal some aspect of fighting ability and facilitate assessment of potential rivals. However, the underlying mechanisms that link the signal to a male's current condition are difficult to investigate in wild populations. In this study, we used digital photographs and chest skin samples to investigate mechanisms of a visual signal used in male competition in a wild primate, the red chest patch in geladas (Theropithecus gelada) in the Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia. We analyzed photographs collected during natural and anesthetized conditions to understand variability in male and female chest redness, and we used chest skin biopsies to explore sex differences in gene expression. Male and female geladas showed similar average redness, but males exhibited a wider within-individual range in redness under natural conditions. These sex differences were reflected at the molecular level, with 10.5% of genes exhibiting significant sex differences in expression. Subadult males exhibited intermediate expression patterns between adult males and females, pointing to mechanisms underlying the development of the red chest patch. We found that genes more highly expressed in males were associated with blood vessel development and maintenance but not with androgen or estrogen activity. Together, our results suggest male gelada redness variability is driven by increased blood vessel branching in the chest skin, providing a potential link between male chest redness and current condition as increased blood circulation to exposed skin could lead to heat loss in the cold, high-altitude environment of geladas.

opencc-zeroMay 2023View details →

zenodo40/100

Data for 'Population density affects sexual selection in an insect model'

Data set (.csv file), analysis code (.R file) and readme (.txt file giving details for dataset and code) accompanying the publication 'Population density affects sexual selection in an insect model' (Winkler L, Eilhardt R, Janicke T, 2023).

opencc-by-4.0Jun 2023View details →

dryad40/100

Macroevolution of sexually selected weapons: weapon evolution in chameleons

Abstract The evolution of sexually selected traits is a major topic in evolutionary biology. However, large-scale evolutionary patterns in these traits remain understudied, especially those traits used in male–male competition (weapons sensu lato). Here, we analyze weapon evolution in chamaeleonid lizards, both within and between the sexes. Chameleons are an outstanding model system because of their morphological diversity (including 11 weapon types among ~220 species) and a large-scale time-calibrated phylogeny. We analyze these 11 traits among 165 species using phylogenetic methods, addressing many questions for the first time in any group. We find that all 11 weapons have each evolved multiple times and that weapon origins are generally more frequent than their losses. We find that almost all weapons have each persisted for &gt;30 million years (and some for &gt;65 million years). Across chameleon phylogeny, we identify both hotspots for weapon evolution (up to 10 types present per species) and coldspots (all weapons absent, many through loss). These hotspots are significantly associated with larger male body size, but are only weakly related to sexual-size dimorphism. We also find that weapon evolution is strongly correlated between males and females. Overall, these results provide a baseline for understanding large-scale patterns of weapon evolution within clades.

opencc-zeroJul 2023View details →

zenodo40/100

Figure 1 in Inter-group conflicts involving adult female and male bearded capuchins, Sapajus libidinosus (Primates: Cebidae), in the context of provisioned resources: resource defense or sexual selection?

Figure 1. The study site is an isolated fragment of forest, surrounded by an urban matrix: Bosque Bougainville in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil. Source: ArcGIS Data and Maps©.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2022View details →

dryad40/100