Selfish genetic elements promote polyandry in a fly.
It is unknown why females mate with multiple males when mating is frequently costly and a single copulation often provides enough sperm to fertilize all a female's eggs. One possibility is that remating increases the fitness of offspring, because fertilization success is biased toward the sperm of high-fitness males. We show that female Drosophila pseudoobscura evolved increased remating rates when exposed to the risk of mating with males carrying a deleterious sex ratio-distorting gene that also reduces sperm competitive ability. Because selfish genetic elements that reduce sperm competitive ability are generally associated with low genetic fitness, they may represent a common driver of the evolution of polyandry.
Price
T A R
TA
School of Biosciences, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, Penryn TR10 9EZ, UK.
Hodgson
D J
DJ
Lewis
Z
Z
Hurst
G D D
GD
Wedell
N
N
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004330:Drosophila; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal; D013076:Sperm Count