Experimentally enforced monogamy: inadvertent selection, inbreeding, or evidence for sexually antagonistic coevolution?
There has been recent criticism of experiments that applied enforced monogamous mating to species with a long history of promiscuity. These experiments indicated that the newly introduced monogamy reversed sexually antagonistic coevolution and caused males to evolve to be less harmful to their mates and females to evolve reduced resistance to harm from males. Several authors have proposed alternative interpretations of these experimental results based on qualitative analysis. If well-founded, these criticisms would invalidate an important part of the empirical foundation for sexually antagonistic coevolution between the sexes. Although these criticisms have a reasonable basis in principle, we find that after quantitative evaluation that they are not supported.
Rice
William R
WR
Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA. rice@lifesci.ucsb.edu
Holland
Brett
B
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D049628:Body Size; D005260:Female; D007178:Inbreeding; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D010152:Pair Bond; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D012737:Sex Factors; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal