SynthesisProceedings. Biological sciences2013
Sexual selection explains more functional variation in the mammalian major histocompatibility complex than parasitism.
Synthesis in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Meta-analysis of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class IIA reveals polymorphism and positive selection in many vertebrate species.Molecular ecology · 2022Pooled it
- Genomic structural variation rescues a classic biological invader from a population bottleneck.Science advances · 2026Article
- No evidence for disassortative mating based on HLA in a small-scale, endogamous population.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Diverse hosts, diverse immune systems: Evolutionary variation in bat immunology.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Correlated evolution of oxidative physiology and MHC-based immunosurveillance in birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- High functional allelic diversity and copy number in both MHC classes in the common buzzard.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Intra-specific copy number variation of MHC class II genes in the Siamese fighting fish.Immunogenetics · 2022Article
- Using de novo genome assembly and high-throughput sequencing to characterize the MHC region in a non-model bird, the Eurasian coot.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Selection and demography drive range-wide patterns of MHC-DRB variation in mule deer.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Neutral and Selective Processes Shape MHC Diversity in Roe Deer in Slovenia.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- What evolutionary processes maintain MHC IIꞵ diversity within and among populations of stickleback?Molecular ecology · 2021Article
- Within-trio tests provide little support for post-copulatory selection on major histocompatibility complex haplotypes in a free-living population.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Avian major histocompatibility complex copy number variation is associated with helminth richness.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Mating preferences can drive expansion or contraction of major histocompatibility complex gene family.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Towards a more healthy conservation paradigm: integrating disease and molecular ecology to aid biological conservationJournal of genetics · 2020Review
- Article
- Multiplicative fitness, rapid haplotype discovery, and fitness decay explain evolution of human MHC.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Evolution of major histocompatibility complex gene copy number.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- Article
- The best smellers make the best choosers: mate choice is affected by female chemosensory receptor gene diversity in a mammal.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Understanding drivers of genetic diversity at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is vitally important for predicting how vertebrate immune defence might respond to future selection pressures and for preserving immunogenetic diversity in declining populations. Parasite-mediated selection is believed to be the major selective force generating MHC polymorphism, and while MHC-based mating preferences also exist for multiple species including humans, the general importance of mate choice is debated. To investigate the contributions of parasitism and sexual selection in explaining among-species variation in MHC diversity, we applied comparative methods and meta-analysis across 112 mammal species, including carnivores, bats, primates, rodents and ungulates. We tested whether MHC diversity increased with parasite richness and relative testes size (as an indicator of the potential for mate choice), while controlling for phylogenetic autocorrelation, neutral mutation rate and confounding ecological variables. We found that MHC nucleotide diversity increased with parasite richness for bats and ungulates but decreased with parasite richness for carnivores. By contrast, nucleotide diversity increased with relative testes size for all taxa. This study provides support for both parasite-mediated and sexual selection in shaping functional MHC polymorphism across mammals, and importantly, suggests that sexual selection could have a more general role than previously thought.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.