ArticleEvolution; international journal of organic evolution2024
Sperm competition intensity shapes divergence in both sperm morphology and reproductive genes across murine rodents.
Article in Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Rapid protamine evolution suppresses meiotic drive inScience advances · 2026Article
- Pervasive relaxed selection on spermatogenesis genes coincident with the evolution of polygyny in gorillas.eLife · 2026Article
- Genome Evolution and the Enigmatic Axial Skeleton of the Hero Shew (Soricidae: Scutisorex Somereni).Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Phylogenomic Approaches to Study Adaptive Evolution in Mammals: From Aging to Aquatic Lifestyles.Annual review of genetics · 2025Review
- Rapid protamine evolution suppresses meiotic drive inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Unusual Sperm Morphology in Two Sedentary Songbird Species.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
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Abstract
It remains unclear how variation in the intensity of sperm competition shapes phenotypic and molecular evolution across clades. Mice and rats in the subfamily Murinae are a rapid radiation exhibiting incredible diversity in sperm morphology and production. We combined phenotypic and genomic data to perform phylogenetic comparisons of male reproductive traits and genes across 78 murine species. We identified several shifts towards smaller relative testes mass (RTM), presumably reflecting reduced sperm competition. Several sperm traits were associated with RTM, suggesting that mating system evolution selects for convergent suites of traits related to sperm competitive ability. We predicted that sperm competition would also drive more rapid molecular divergence in species with large testes. Contrary to this, we found that many spermatogenesis genes evolved more rapidly in species with smaller RTM due to relaxed purifying selection. While some reproductive genes evolved rapidly under recurrent positive selection, relaxed selection played a greater role in underlying rapid evolution in small testes species. Our work demonstrates that postcopulatory sexual selection can impose strong purifying selection shaping the evolution of male reproduction and that broad patterns of molecular evolution may help identify genes that contribute to male fertility.
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