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The impact of climatic variation on the opportunity for sexual selection.

ABSTRACT: Many studies have demonstrated influences of climatic variation on a variety of ecological processes, however, its impact on the potent evolutionary force of sexual selection has largely been ignored. The intensity of sexual selection is a fundamental parameter in animal populations, which depends upon the degree of polygamy and will probably be influenced by the impact of local climatic variation upon 'environmental potential for polygamy'. Here, we provide evidence of a direct effect of local climatic variation on the intensity of sexual selection, by showing a clear correlation between local weather conditions and inter-annual changes in the degree of polygamy in a long-term study of colonially breeding grey seals (Halichoerus grypus). Our results show that changes in local weather conditions alter the annual proportion of males contributing to the effective population size (Ne) by up to 61%. Consequently, over the 'lifetime' of a cohort, a broader range of individuals will contribute genetically to the next generation if local weather conditions are variable. In the context of predicted future changes in climatic variation, these findings have broad implications for population genetics of socially structured animal systems through the major influence that the degree of polygamy has upon Ne.

SUBMITTER: Twiss SD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2373809 | biostudies-other | 2007 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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The impact of climatic variation on the opportunity for sexual selection.

Twiss Sean D SD Thomas Christopher C Poland Veronica V Graves Jeff A JA Pomeroy Patrick P

Biology letters 20070201 1

Many studies have demonstrated influences of climatic variation on a variety of ecological processes, however, its impact on the potent evolutionary force of sexual selection has largely been ignored. The intensity of sexual selection is a fundamental parameter in animal populations, which depends upon the degree of polygamy and will probably be influenced by the impact of local climatic variation upon 'environmental potential for polygamy'. Here, we provide evidence of a direct effect of local ...[more]

PMID: 17443953

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Project description:Pea crabs, Dissodactylus primitivus, inhabit multiple echinoid (heart urchin) hosts. Male and female crabs move among hosts in search for mates, and both sexes mate multiple times, creating opportunities for post-copulatory sexual selection. For such selection to occur, only a fraction of the males who succeed in mating can also succeed in siring progeny. Jossart et al. 2014 used 4 microsatellite loci to document parentage and mating frequencies of both sexes in D. primitivus. From these data we identified the mean and variance in female offspring numbers, as well as the proportions of the female population that were gravid and not bearing offspring. We next identified the proportions of the male population who had (1) mated and sired offspring, (2) mated but failed to sire offspring, and (3) failed to mate altogether. We used these results to estimate the opportunity for selection on males and females in terms of mate numbers and offspring numbers, and estimated the sex difference in the opportunity for selection (i.e., the opportunity for sexual selection) using both forms of data. We then partitioned the total variance in male fitness into pre- and post-copulatory components and identified the fraction of the total opportunity for selection occurring in each context. Our results show that the opportunity for selection on each sex was of similar magnitude (0.69-0.98), consistent with this polyandrogynous mating system. We also found that 37% of the total opportunity for sexual selection on males occurred within the context of post-copulatory sexual selection. However, the fraction of the total opportunity for selection that was due to sexual selection, estimated using both mate numbers and offspring numbers, was 9% and 23% respectively. Thus, we further reduced our estimate of the opportunity for post-copulatory sexual selection in D. primitivus to less than 10% of the total opportunity for selection (0.37 of 0.09 and 0.23 = 0.03 and 0.09). Our results provide the first estimate of the maximum possible strength of post-copulatory sexual selection in crustaceans using this approach.

Project description:BACKGROUND:The native Australian fly Drosophila serrata belongs to the highly speciose montium subgroup of the melanogaster species group. It has recently emerged as an excellent model system with which to address a number of important questions, including the evolution of traits under sexual selection and traits involved in climatic adaptation along latitudinal gradients. Understanding the molecular genetic basis of such traits has been limited by a lack of genomic resources for this species. Here, we present the first expressed sequence tag (EST) collection for D. serrata that will enable the identification of genes underlying sexually-selected phenotypes and physiological responses to environmental change and may help resolve controversial phylogenetic relationships within the montium subgroup. RESULTS:A normalized cDNA library was constructed from whole fly bodies at several developmental stages, including larvae and adults. Assembly of 11,616 clones sequenced from the 3' end allowed us to identify 6,607 unique contigs, of which at least 90% encoded peptides. Partial transcripts were discovered from a variety of genes of evolutionary interest by BLASTing contigs against the 12 Drosophila genomes currently sequenced. By incorporating into the cDNA library multiple individuals from populations spanning a large portion of the geographical range of D. serrata, we were able to identify 11,057 putative single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), with 278 different contigs having at least one "double hit" SNP that is highly likely to be a real polymorphism. At least 394 EST-associated microsatellite markers, representing 355 different contigs, were also found, providing an additional set of genetic markers. The assembled EST library is available online at http://www.chenowethlab.org/serrata/index.cgi. CONCLUSION:We have provided the first gene collection and largest set of polymorphic genetic markers, to date, for the fly D. serrata. The EST collection will provide much needed genomic resources for this model species and facilitate comparative evolutionary studies within the montium subgroup of the D. melanogaster lineage.

Dataset Information

The impact of climatic variation on the opportunity for sexual selection.

Publications

The impact of climatic variation on the opportunity for sexual selection.

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