Meiotic drive does not cause condition‐dependent reduction of the sexual ornament in stalk‐eyed flies

Meiotic drive systems are associated with low-frequency chromosomal inversions. These expected to accumulate deleterious mutations due reduced recombination and low effective population size. We test this prediction using the ‘sex-ratio’ (SR) meiotic system of Malaysian stalk-eyed fly Teleopsis dalmanni. SR is a large inversion (or inversions) on X chromosome. In particular, we study eyespan in males carrying chromosome, as trait highly exaggerated, sexually dimorphic trait, known have heightened condition-dependent expression. Larvae were raised high larval food stress environments. showed under treatments, but there was no evidence decrease stress. Similar more complex patterns observed for female eyespan, additivity heterosis results do not support hypothesis that sexual ornament size response putative increase mutation load. Instead, likely reflects compensatory resource allocation different traits drive-mediated destruction sperm.