SEXUAL SELECTION CAN REMOVE AN EXPERIMENTALLY INDUCED MUTATION LOAD

Sexual Selection Can Reduce Mutational Load in Drosophila Subobscura

Recombination and selection can remove blaTEM alleles from bacterial populations.

We passaged cells expressing TEM-1 and TEM-12 from a single plasmid through either ampicillin or ceftazidime. We found that the combined effects of recombination and selection removed the bla(TEM-1) allele from the bacterial population when it was passaged through ceftazidime or the bla(TEM-12) allele when cultures were passaged through ampicillin.

Populations with elevated mutation load do not benefit from the operation of sexual selection.

Theory predicts that if most mutations are deleterious to both overall fitness and condition-dependent traits affecting mating success, sexual selection will purge mutation load and increase nonsexual fitness. We explored this possibility with populations of mutagenized Drosophila melanogaster exhibiting elevated levels of deleterious variation and evolving in the presence or absence of male-ma...

Strong sexual selection in males against a mutation load that reduces offspring production in seed beetles.

Theory predicts that sexual reproduction can increase population viability relative to asexual reproduction by allowing sexual selection in males to remove deleterious mutations from the population without large demographic costs. This requires that selection acts more strongly in males than females and that mutations affecting male reproductive success have pleiotropic effects on population pr...

Sexual selection can resolve sex-linked sexual antagonism.

Sexual selection is a potent evolutionary force. However, very few models have considered the evolution of female preferences for traits expressed in both sexes. Here we explore how female preferences coevolve with sexually antagonistic traits, which involve alleles that are beneficial to one sex but harmful to the other. We show that with a sexually antagonistic trait on the X chromosome (male...