title: Covariance between testes size and substitution rates in primates.
abstract: Understanding the causes of substitution rate variation is an important goal in the study of molecular evolution. It has been proposed that sperm competition intensity may affect genome-wide rates of substitution as a by-product of selection on sperm numbers. Here, I test this hypothesis by applying recently developed Bayesian methods to a data set consisting of approximately 35 kb of sequence data from 55 primate species. I find evidence for positive covariance between testes mass and the rate of substitution, independently of the potentially confounding effects of body mass and longevity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada alex.wong@carleton.ca.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wong
mesh_terms: D019943:Amino Acid Substitution; D000818:Animals; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D001683:Biological Clocks; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D016678:Genome; D008297:Male; D008957:Models, Genetic; D059645:Mutation Rate; D009929:Organ Size; D010802:Phylogeny; D011323:Primates / Q000235:genetics*; D013737:Testis / Q000254:growth & development*
keywords: molecular clock; mutation rate; sexual selection; sperm competition; substitution rate