In this section
@article{Flintham:2025:evlett/qrae059,
author = {Flintham, E and Savolainen, V and Otto, S and Reuter, M and Mullon, C},
doi = {evlett/qrae059},
journal = {Evolution Letters},
pages = {259--272},
title = {The maintenance of genetic polymorphism underlyingsexually antagonistic traits},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrae059},
volume = {9},
year = {2025}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - Selection often favours different trait values in males and females, leading to genetic conflicts between the sexes when traits have a shared genetic basis. Such sexual antagonism has beenproposed to maintain genetic polymorphism. However, this notion is based on insights from population genetic models of single loci with fixed fitness effects. It is thus unclear how readily polymorphism emerges from sex-specific selection acting on continuous traits, where fitness effects arisefrom the genotype-phenotype map and the fitness landscape. Here we model the evolution of a continuous trait that has a shared genetic basis but different optima in males and females, considering a wide variety of genetic architectures and fitness landscapes. For autosomal loci, the long-termmaintenance of polymorphism requires strong conflict between males and females that generatesuncharacteristic sex-specific fitness patterns. Instead, more plausible sex-specific fitness landscapestypically generate stabilising selection leading to an evolutionarily stable state that consists of a singlehomozygous genotype. Except for sites tightly linked to the sex determining region, our results indicate that genetic variation due to sexual antagonism should arise only rarely and often be transient,making these signatures challenging to detect in genomic data.
AU - Flintham,E
AU - Savolainen,V
AU - Otto,S
AU - Reuter,M
AU - Mullon,C
DO - evlett/qrae059
EP - 272
PY - 2025///
SN - 2056-3744
SP - 259
TI - The maintenance of genetic polymorphism underlyingsexually antagonistic traits
T2 - Evolution Letters
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrae059
VL - 9
ER -
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