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Sexual selection is an evolutionary process that favours the traits of individuals who compete more successfully for mating opportunities. These traits are not necessarily those favoured by natural selection on survival and can include exaggerated indicators of sexual fitness and increased ability for conflict within or between sexes.
Through genetic and molecular analyses of interspecific stigma–pollen interactions, the authors show that Brassicaceae plants use an integrated pollen discrimination system and a shared pollen rejection pathway to reject conspecific self-pollen and heterospecific pollen. This establishes a mechanistic link between self-incompatibility and speciation in this clade.
A detailed analysis of male song structure in zebra finches shows how females use particular features of songs as indicators of male quality in species that learn only one song.
The narrative that larger males are the norm in mammals has predominated for over a century. An analysis of body mass dimorphism across mammals, sampling families by their species richness, indicates that males are not larger than females in most mammals and that monomorphism is almost as prevalent.
The evolutionary trajectory of avian sex chromosomes may be more intricate than previously understood. In this study, sequencing and analysis of the neo-sex chromosomes and genome of the Crested Ibis suggests a multidirectional evolution of sex chromosomes in core waterbirds.
Why do males typically compete more intensely for mating opportunities than do females and how does this relate to sex differences in gamete size? A new study provides a formal evolutionary link between gamete size dimorphism and ‘Bateman gradients’, which describe how much individuals of each sex benefit from additional matings.
Behavioural experiments and genetic manipulations reveal the mechanisms by which Drosophila females plastically alter their choosiness in response to mating, resolving trade-offs of mate choice.
Sperm length unexpectedly varies more than 3,000-fold across species, posing new questions for anisogamy theory and understanding the different forces shaping evolution of the male gamete.
The Y chromosome of the freshwater fish Poecilia parae may have successively evolved five haplotypes that are maintained in the population for alternative male reproductive strategies.
