Experimental mutation-accumulation on the X chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster reveals stronger selection on males than females

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Research Article

Jessica M Bouchard¹  Martin A Mallet¹  Christopher M Kimber¹  Adam K Chippindale¹ 

[1] Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada;

关键词: Sexual Selection;    Inbreeding Depression;    Genetic Load;    Female Fitness;    Adult Fitness;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2148-11-156

 received in 2011-05-27, accepted in 2011-06-06,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSex differences in the magnitude or direction of mutational effect may be important to a variety of population processes, shaping the mutation load and affecting the cost of sex itself. These differences are expected to be greatest after sexual maturity. Mutation-accumulation (MA) experiments provide the most direct way to examine the consequences of new mutations, but most studies have focused on juvenile viability without regard to sex, and on autosomes rather than sex chromosomes; both adult fitness and X-linkage have been little studied. We therefore investigated the effects of 50 generations of X-chromosome mutation accumulation on the fitness of males and females derived from an outbred population of Drosophila melanogaster.ResultsFitness declined rapidly in both sexes as a result of MA, but adult males showed markedly greater fitness loss relative to their controls compared to females expressing identical genotypes, even when females were made homozygous for the X. We estimate that these mutations are partially additive (h ~ 0.3) in females. In addition, the majority of new mutations appear to harm both males and females.ConclusionsOur data helps fill a gap in our understanding of the consequences of sexual selection for genetic load, and suggests that stronger selection on males may indeed purge deleterious mutations affecting female fitness.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Mallet et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011