ArticleHeredity2019
Ejaculate sperm number compensation in stalk-eyed flies carrying a selfish meiotic drive element.
Article in Heredity, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Single-cell consequences of X-linked meiotic drive in stalk-eyed flies.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Novel stressors and trait variation determine X-linked meiotic drive frequency.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The metabolic costs of meiotic drive.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- X chromosome drive is constrained by sexual selection and influences ornament evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Meiotic drive adaptive testes enlargement during early development in the stalk-eyed fly.Biology letters · 2022Article
- A meiotic driver alters sperm form and function in house mice: a possible example of spite.Chromosome research : an international journal on the molecular, supramolecular and evolutionary aspects of chromosome biology · 2022Article
- Sexual selection can partly explain low frequencies ofProceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Beyond Drosophila: resolving the rapid radiation of schizophoran flies with phylotranscriptomics.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Selfish genetic elements and male fertility.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Ancient gene drives: an evolutionary paradox.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Meiotic drive reduces egg-to-adult viability in stalk-eyed flies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Description of the karyotype ofComparative cytogenetics · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Meiotic drive genes cause the degeneration of non-carrier sperm to bias transmission in their favour. Males carrying meiotic drive are expected to suffer reduced fertility due to the loss of sperm and associated harmful side-effects of the mechanisms causing segregation distortion. However, sexual selection should promote adaptive compensation to overcome these deleterious effects. We investigate this using SR, an X-linked meiotic drive system in the stalk-eyed fly, Teleopsis dalmanni. Despite sperm destruction caused by drive, we find no evidence that SR males transfer fewer sperm to the female's spermathecae (long-term storage organs). Likewise, migration from the spermathecae to the ventral receptacle for fertilisation is similar for SR and wildtype male sperm, both over short and long time-frames. In addition, sperm number in storage is similar even after males have mated multiple times. Our study challenges conventional assumptions about the deleterious effects of drive on male fertility. This suggests that SR male ejaculate investment per ejaculate has been adjusted to match sperm delivery by wildtype males. We interpret these results in the light of recent theoretical models that predict how ejaculate strategies evolve when males vary in the resources allocated to reproduction or in sperm fertility. Adaptive compensation is likely in species where meiotic drive has persisted over many generations and predicts a higher stable frequency of drive maintained in wild populations. Future research must determine exactly how drive males compensate for failed spermatogenesis, and how such compensation may trade-off with investment in other fitness traits.
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