High-fitness Males Produce Low-fitness Daughters, And High-fitness Mothers Produce Low-fitness Sons

In a new study, Alison Pischedda and Adam Chippindale explore the potential costs of intralocus sexual conflict in the genetically tractable fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. By measuring the inheritance of fitness across generations, and across the genome, they show that sexual selection provides no advantage to the next generation. To the contrary, having a fit parent of the opposite sex leads to dramatically lower rates of reproductive success. Sexually antagonistic genes, it appears, may have far-reaching effects on patterns of fitness inheritance.

Using a recently developed genetic tool called hemiclonal analysis, researchers can screen the (nearly) entire genome for genetic variation within a population and for evidence of selection acting on that variation. Pischedda and Chippindale used hemiclonal analysis to generate high- and low-fitness parents, and selected three lines of the most and least fit mothers and fathers, based on egg production and number of offspring sired. High-fitness females laid 35% more eggs than low-fitness females; high-fitness males fathered 44% more offspring than their less-fit counterparts.

After crossing every possible combination of high- and low-fitness parental lines (yielding 36 crosses), the authors evaluated fitness effects on offspring to determine patterns of fitness inheritance, using reproductive success of sons and daughters as measures of their fitness. Overall, they found an inverted pattern of fitness inheritance: high maternal fitness was good for daughters but not sons, and sons born of high-fitness mothers had substantially fewer offspring than those with low-fitness mothers.

Similarly, daughters sired by high-fitness fathers laid fewer eggs than those with low-fitness fathers. Thus, females that choose successful mates, the authors explain, won't see indirect benefits through sons, and to make matters worse, will incur the cost of less-fit daughters. This sexually antagonistic pattern challenges sexual selection theory predictions that female costs of reproduction are offset by the indirect benefits of passing on good genes or generating sexy sons with high reproductive success.

Many genes shaping sexual characteristics are likely affected by the conditions that favor intralocus sexual conflict in sexually reproducing organisms, the authors argue, suggesting that the phenomenon may operate in far more organisms than the fruit fly, where it was first discovered.

And because sexually antagonistic genes compromise fitness by reducing fertility, the authors suggest, they may offer clues to a longstanding puzzle: how can genetic variation for a trait persist in a population in spite of strong selection in favor of one variant? Part of the answer may lie within the X chromosome: it may harbor sexually antagonistic genes that undermine offspring fitness of one sex, despite being selected for in the other sex.

For now, the assembled research suggests that sexually antagonistic genes are common and consequential in the genome and powerful enough to create a reversed inheritance of Darwinian fitness across the sexes. Simply seeking out the most attractive mate may have surprising implications for the offspring.

Citation: Pischedda A, Chippindale AK (2006) Intralocus sexual conflict diminishes the benefits of sexual selection. PLoS Biol 4(11): e356. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040356.