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The role of Haldane's rule in sex allocation

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Version 1 2023-05-16, 16:34
journal contribution
posted on 2025-01-15, 01:01 authored by M Olsson, T Madsen, T Uller, Erik WapstraErik Wapstra, B Ujvari
Sex allocation theory predicts that parents should bias their reproductive investments toward the offspring sex generating the greatest fitness return. When females are the heterogametic sex (e.g., ZW in butterflies, some lizards, and birds), production of daughters is associated with an increased risk of offspring inviability due to the expression of paternal, detrimental recessives on the Z chromosome. Thus, daughters should primarily be produced when mating with partners of high genetic quality. When female sand lizards (Lacerta agilis) mate with genetically superior males, exhibiting high MHC Class I polymorphism, offspring sex ratios are biased towards daughters, possibly due to recruitment of more Z-carrying oocytes when females have assessed the genetic quality of their partners. If our study has general applicability across taxa, it predicts taxon-specific sex allocation effects depending on which sex is the heterogametic one.

History

Publication title

Evolution

Volume

59

Issue

1

Pagination

221-225

ISSN

0014-3820

Department/School

Biological Sciences

Publisher

Society Study of Evolution

Publication status

  • Published

Place of publication

USA

Socio-economic Objectives

280111 Expanding knowledge in the environmental sciences

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