Sexual conflict over mating in lygaeus seed bugs
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Date
24/11/2011Author
Evans, Gethin Meirion Vaughan
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Abstract
Sexual conflict has been proposed to be important for evolution, and is often implicated in
population divergence and speciation through sexually antagonistic co-evolution (SAC).
However, empirical tests of these ideas on field populations are few. How sexual conflict,
and SAC, operates in the wild, remains an important unanswered question if we are to fully
understand the role of sexual conflict in evolution in nature. Here, I studied sexual conflict
over mating in the seed feeding bugs Lygaeus equestris and Lygaeus simulans. Firstly, I
show that laboratory adapted populations of L. equestris that differ in the magnitude of
sexual conflict also differ in aspects of their reproductive development and mating
propensity, with the population displaying greater conflict load also mating more readily.
Study of female receptivity to mating as an evolvable trait, that could be involved in conflict
over mating, revealed moderate to low heritability at two age groups. To better understand
variation in the expression of sexual conflict in the wild, field caught populations of L.
equestris, ranging across its distribution, and also of its sister species, L. simulans, were
assayed for the magnitude of sexual conflict over mating in common garden laboratory
experiments. High female mating costs were apparent across the populations, but the
magnitude of these costs did not vary. No consistent patterns of mating costs and life history
variation were found however, arguing against close links between mating costs and life-history.
Finally, I investigated whether populations displaying sexual conflict over mating
have begun to diverge, and evolve reproductive isolation. I found no evidence of
reproductive isolation, or variation in mating propensity, between populations of L. equestris
when crossed in reciprocal no-choice mating trials. However, L. equestris and L. simulans
did show pre-zygotic reproductive isolation albeit with asymmetries between the reciprocal
crosses (L. simulans males were able to mate L. equestris females, but male L. equestris were
largely unable to mate L. simulans females). As expected for close taxa that perhaps have not
been diverged for long, pre-zygotic isolation was perhaps stronger than post-zygotic
isolation, as F2 offspring were generated by some of the inter-specific crosses: gene flow can
therefore occur between these species contrary to previous studies. My data suggest that
sexual conflict over mating may reduce the likelihood of speciation through the evolution of
male persistence, as well as promote it through population divergence.