Sexual conflict maintains variation at an insecticide resistance locus

BACKGROUND: The maintenance of genetic variation through sexually antagonistic selection is controversial, partly because specific sexually-antagonistic alleles have not been identified. The Drosophila DDT resistance allele (DDT-R) is an exception. This allele increases female fitness, but simultaneously decreases male fitness, and it has been suggested that this sexual antagonism could explain why polymorphism was maintained at the locus prior to DDT use. We tested this possibility using a genetic model and then used evolving fly populations to test model predictions. RESULTS: Theory predicted that sexual antagonism is able to maintain genetic variation at this locus, hence explaining why DDT-R did not fix prior to DDT use despite increasing female fitness, and experimentally evolving fly populations verified theoretical predictions. CONCLUSIONS: This demonstrates that sexually antagonistic selection can maintain genetic variation and explains the DDT-R frequencies observed in nature. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12915-015-0143-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.