Intralocus sexual conflict can resolve the male-female health-survival paradox
Archer, R; Recker, M; Duffy, E; et al.Hosken, D
Date: 28 November 2018
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Nature
Publisher DOI
Abstract
At any given age, men are more likely to die than women, but women have poorer health at
older ages. This is referred to as the “male-female, health-survival paradox”, which is not
fully understood. Here, we provide a general solution to the paradox that relies on intralocus
sexual conflict, where alleles segregating in the ...
At any given age, men are more likely to die than women, but women have poorer health at
older ages. This is referred to as the “male-female, health-survival paradox”, which is not
fully understood. Here, we provide a general solution to the paradox that relies on intralocus
sexual conflict, where alleles segregating in the population have late-acting positive effects
on male fitness, but negative effects on female health. Using an evolutionary modelling
framework we show that male-benefit, female-detriment alleles can spread if they are
expressed after female reproduction stops. We provide support for our conflict based
solution using experimental Drosophila data. Our results show that selecting for increased
late-life male reproductive effort can increase male fitness but have a detrimental effect on
female fitness. Furthermore, we show that late-life male fertility is negatively genetically
correlated with female health. Our study suggests that intralocus sexual conflict could
resolve the health-survival paradox
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