Jp. Randerson et al., Male killing can select for male mate choice: a novel solution to the paradox of the lek, P ROY SOC B, 267(1446), 2000, pp. 867-874
Citations number
32
Categorie Soggetti
Experimental Biology
Journal title
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON SERIES B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
In lekking species, intense directional selection is applied to aspects of
the male genotype by female choice. Under conventional quantitative genetic
s theory, the expectation is that this will lead to a rapid loss in additiv
e genetic variance for the trait in question. However, despite female choic
e, male variation is maintained and hence it pays females to continue choos
ing. This has been termed the 'paradox of the lek: Here we present a theore
tical analysis of a putative sex-role-reversed lek in the butterfly Acraea
encedon. Sex-role reversal appears to have come about because of infection
with a male-killing Wolbachia. The bacterium is highly prevalent in some po
pulations, such that there is a dearth of males. Receptive females form den
se aggregations, and it has been suggested that males preferentially select
females uninfected with the bacterium. As with more conventional systems,
this presents a theoretical problem exactly analogous to the lek paradox, n
amely, what maintains female variation and hence why do males continue to c
hoose? We model the evolution of a male choice gene that allows discriminat
ion between infected and uninfected females, and show that the stable maint
enance of both female variation and male choice is likely, so long as males
make mistakes when discriminating between females. Furthermore, our model
allows the maintenance, in a panmictic population, of a male killer that is
perfectly transmitted. This is the first model to allow this result, and m
ay explain the long-term persistence of a male killer in Hypolimnas bolina.