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Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict

Intergenomic evolutionary conflicts increase biological diversity. In sexual conflict, female defence against males is generally assumed to be resistance, which, however, often leads to trait exaggeration but not diversification. Here, we address whether tolerance, a female defence mechanism known f...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Michels, Jan, Gorb, Stanislav N., Reinhardt, Klaus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25673297
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.1107
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author Michels, Jan
Gorb, Stanislav N.
Reinhardt, Klaus
author_facet Michels, Jan
Gorb, Stanislav N.
Reinhardt, Klaus
author_sort Michels, Jan
collection PubMed
description Intergenomic evolutionary conflicts increase biological diversity. In sexual conflict, female defence against males is generally assumed to be resistance, which, however, often leads to trait exaggeration but not diversification. Here, we address whether tolerance, a female defence mechanism known from interspecific conflicts, exists in sexual conflict. We examined the traumatic insemination of female bed bugs via cuticle penetration by males, a textbook example of sexual conflict. Confocal laser scanning microscopy revealed large proportions of the soft and elastic protein resilin in the cuticle of the spermalege, the female defence organ. Reduced tissue damage and haemolymph loss were identified as adaptive female benefits from resilin. These did not arise from resistance because microindentation showed that the penetration force necessary to breach the cuticle was significantly lower at the resilin-rich spermalege than at other cuticle sites. Furthermore, a male survival analysis indicated that the spermalege did not impose antagonistic selection on males. Our findings suggest that the specific spermalege material composition evolved to tolerate the traumatic cuticle penetration. They demonstrate the importance of tolerance in sexual conflict and genitalia evolution, extend fundamental coevolution and speciation models and contribute to explaining the evolution of complexity. We propose that tolerance can drive trait diversity.
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spelling pubmed-43454792015-03-11 Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict Michels, Jan Gorb, Stanislav N. Reinhardt, Klaus J R Soc Interface Research Articles Intergenomic evolutionary conflicts increase biological diversity. In sexual conflict, female defence against males is generally assumed to be resistance, which, however, often leads to trait exaggeration but not diversification. Here, we address whether tolerance, a female defence mechanism known from interspecific conflicts, exists in sexual conflict. We examined the traumatic insemination of female bed bugs via cuticle penetration by males, a textbook example of sexual conflict. Confocal laser scanning microscopy revealed large proportions of the soft and elastic protein resilin in the cuticle of the spermalege, the female defence organ. Reduced tissue damage and haemolymph loss were identified as adaptive female benefits from resilin. These did not arise from resistance because microindentation showed that the penetration force necessary to breach the cuticle was significantly lower at the resilin-rich spermalege than at other cuticle sites. Furthermore, a male survival analysis indicated that the spermalege did not impose antagonistic selection on males. Our findings suggest that the specific spermalege material composition evolved to tolerate the traumatic cuticle penetration. They demonstrate the importance of tolerance in sexual conflict and genitalia evolution, extend fundamental coevolution and speciation models and contribute to explaining the evolution of complexity. We propose that tolerance can drive trait diversity. The Royal Society 2015-03-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4345479/ /pubmed/25673297 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.1107 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2015 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Michels, Jan
Gorb, Stanislav N.
Reinhardt, Klaus
Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict
title Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict
title_full Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict
title_fullStr Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict
title_full_unstemmed Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict
title_short Reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict
title_sort reduction of female copulatory damage by resilin represents evidence for tolerance in sexual conflict
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25673297
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.1107
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