On intralocus sexual conflict in hermaphroditic animals

Former lab-member Jessica Abbott, who defended her PhD-thesis in Lund in 2006 has a review-paper published in Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B., that can be found here. After finishing her PhD, Jessica moved for a two-year postdoc to Adam Chippindale's lab at Queens University in Canada, and then back to Sweden and Uppsala University (Ted Morrow's lab).

Jessica will visit the Biology Department in Lund on October 14 for a Thursday Seminar in the "Blue Hall" (14.00, Thursday 14 October 2010). One possibility would be to read her review-paper on our lab-meeting that week (Thursday October 13, at 10.15) to prepare for her talk. Here is the abstract of Jessica's article in Proceedings:


Intra-locus sexual conflict and sexually antagonistic genetic variation in hermaphroditic animals

Jessica K. Abbott

Abstract

Intra-locus sexual conflict results when sex-specific selection pressures for a given trait act against the intra-sexual genetic correlation for that trait. It has been found in a wide variety of taxa in both laboratory and natural populations, but the importance of intra-locus sexual conflict and sexually antagonistic genetic variation in hermaphroditic organisms has rarely been considered. This is not so surprising given the conceptual and theoretical association of intra-locus sexual conflict with sexual dimorphism, but there is no a priori reason why intra-locus sexual conflict cannot occur in hermaphroditic organisms as well. Here, I discuss the potential for intra-locus sexual conflict in hermaphroditic animals and review the available evidence for such conflict, and for the existence of sexually antagonistic genetic variation in hermaphrodites. I argue that mutations with asymmetric effects are particularly likely to be important in mediating sexual antagonism in hermaphroditic organisms. Moreover, sexually antagonistic genetic variation is likely to play an important role in inter-individual variation in sex allocation and in transitions to and from gonochorism (separate sexes) in simultaneous hermaphrodites. I also describe how sequential hermaphrodites may experience a unique form of intra-locus sexual conflict via antagonistic pleiotropy. Finally, I conclude with some suggestions for further research.