Polygamy and purifying selection in birds.

Wanders, Kees, Chen, Guangji, Feng, Shaohong, Zhang, Guojie, Székely, Tamás, Bruford, Mike ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6357-6080, Végvári, Zsolt, Eichhorn, Götz and Urrutia, Araxi 2023. Polygamy and purifying selection in birds. Evolution: International Journal of Organic Evolution 77 (1) , pp. 276-288. 10.1093/evolut/qpac010

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (5MB)

Abstract

Good genes theories of sexual selection predict that polygamy will be associated with more efficient removal of deleterious alleles (purifying selection), due to the alignment of sexual selection with natural selection. On the other hand, runaway selection theories expect no such alignment of natural and sexual selection, and may instead predict less efficient purifying selection in polygamous species due to higher reproductive variance. In an analysis of polymorphism data extracted from 150-bird genome assemblies, we show that polygamous species carry significantly fewer nonsynonymous polymorphisms, relative to synonymous polymorphisms, than monogamous bird species (p = .0005). We also show that this effect is independent of effective population size, consistent with the alignment of natural selection with sexual selection and “good genes” theories of sexual selection. Further analyses found no impact of polygamy on genetic diversity, while polygamy in females (polyandry) had a marginally significant impact (p = .045). We also recapitulate previous findings that smaller body mass and greater geographic range size are associated with more efficient purifying selection, more intense GC-biased gene conversion, and greater genetic diversity.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Biosciences
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0014-3820
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 April 2023
Date of Acceptance:	29 October 2022
Last Modified:	06 Jan 2024 02:46
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/158291

Citation Data

Cited 1 time in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item