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Conflict over condition-dependent sex allocation can lead to mixed sex-determination systems

Journal article published in 2014 by Bram Kuijper ORCID, Ido Pen
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

Theory suggests that genetic conflicts drives turnovers between sex-determining mechanisms, yet these studies only apply to cases where sex allocation is independent of environment or condition. Here, we model parent-offspring conflict in the presence of condition-dependent sex allocation, where the environmnet has sex-specific fitness consequences. Additionally, one sex is assumed to be more costly to produce than the other, which leads offspring to favor a sex ratio less biased towards the cheaper sex in comparison to the sex ratio favored by mothers. The scope for parent-offspring conflict depends on the relative frequency of both environments: when one environment is less common than the other, parent-offspring conflict can be reduced or even entirely absent, despite a biased population sex ratio. The model shows that conflict-driven invasions of condition-independent sex factors (e.g., sex chromosomes) result either in the loss of condition-dependent sex allocation, or, interestingly, lead to stable mixtures of condition-dependent and condition-independent sex factors. The latter outcome corresponds to empirical observations in which sex chromosomes are present in organisms with environment-dependent sex determination. Lastly, conflict can also favor errors in environmental perception, potentially resulting in the loss of condition-dependent sex allocation without genetic changes to sex-determining loci.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.