Agata Plesnar-Bielak

Jagiellonian University | UJ · Institute of Environmental Sciences

Intralocus sexual conflict (IASC) arises when fitness optima for a shared trait differ between the sexes; such conflict may help maintain genetic variation within populations. Sex-limited expression of sexually antagonistic traits may help resolve the conflict, but the extent of this resolution remains a subject of debate. In species with alternati...

Selection for secondary sexual trait (SST) elaboration may increase intralocus sexual conflict over the optimal values of traits expressed from shared genomes. This conflict can reduce female fitness, and the resulting gender load can be exacerbated by environmental stress, with consequences for a population's ability to adapt to novel environments...

Background: The maintenance of considerable genetic variation in sexually selected traits (SSTs) is puzzling given directional selection expected to act on these traits. A possible explanation is the existence of a genotype-by-environment (GxE) interaction for fitness, by which elaborate SSTs are favored in some environments but selected against i...

Sexual selection and conflict can act on genes with important metabolic functions, potentially shaping standing genetic variance in such genes, and thus evolutionary potential of populations. Here, using experimental evolution, we show how reproductive competition intensity and thermal environment affect selection on phosphogluconate dehydrogenase...

Sexual conflict has extremely important consequences for various evolutionary processes including its effect on local adaptation and extinction probability during environmental change. The awareness that the intensity and dynamics of sexual conflict is highly dependent on the ecological setting of a population has grown in recent years, but much wo...

Background The information about the magnitude of between-individual differences in thermal plasticity and identification of the underlying molecular mechanisms are key to understand the evolution of thermal plasticity. In particular, genes underlying variation in the physiological response to temperature can provide raw material for selection acti...

According to theory, sexual selection in males may efficiently purge mutation load of sexual populations, reducing or fully compensating “the cost of males”. For this to occur, mutations not only need to be deleterious to both sexes, they also must affect males more than females. A frequently overlooked problem is that relative strength of selectio...

Fig. S1. Mean fecundity of females developed and maintained at 24°C or 28°C following mating with males maintained at 24°C (squares) or 28°C (circles).

Mate-guarding strategies are known to evolve in response to changes in the environment, but little is known about the genetic and plastic components of this source of variation. Here, we investigated how risk associated with aggression shapes postcopulatory association time between mates in the bulb mite, Rhizoglyphus robini, a species in which agg...

Evolutionary interests of males and females are usually not the same, leading to different reproductive roles of the sexes. This results in sexual conflict, where a trait that is beneficial for one sex is detrimental to the other (Parker, 1979). Sexual conflict may take one of two forms. Intralocus sexual conflict is expressed when the direction of...

The maintenance of males and outcrossing is widespread, despite considerable costs of males. By enabling recombination between distinct genotypes, outcrossing may be advantageous during adaptation to novel environments and if so, it should be selected for under environmental challenge. However, a given environmental change may influence fitness of...

Variation in individual condition is probably one of the most critical factors affecting the high levels of diversity in animal fitness components, commonly observed in natural populations. Differential access to nutritional resources, in turn, is among the most important determinants of condition. However, our understanding of how resource access...

Selection acting on males can reduce mutation load of sexual relative to asexual populations, thus mitigating the two-fold cost of sex, provided that it seeks and destroys the same mutations as selection acting on females, but with higher efficiency. This could happen due to sexual selection – a potent evolutionary force that in most systems predom...

The maintenance of males and outcrossing is widespread, despite considerable costs of males. By enabling recombination between distinct genotypes, outcrossing may be advantageous during adaptation to a novel environments and if so, it should be selected for under environmental challenge. However, a given environmental change may influence fitness o...

Intralocus sexual conflict (IASC) prevents males and females from reaching their disparate phenotypic optima and is widespread, but little is known about its genetic underpinnings. In Rhizoglyphus robini, a mite species with alternative male morphs, elevated sexual dimorphism of the armoured fighter males (compared to more feminized scramblers male...

Sexual conflict leading to sexual antagonistic coevolution has been hypothesized to drive reproductive isolation in allopatric populations and hence lead to speciation. However, the generality of this speciation mechanism is under debate. We used experimental evolution in the bulb mite Rhizoglyphusrobini to investigate whether sexual conflict promo...

Temperature is a key environmental factor affecting almost all aspects of life histories in ectotherms. The theory predicts that they grow faster, reach smaller sizes and produce smaller offspring when temperature increases. In addition, temperature changes, through their effects on metabolism, may also influence the expression of alternative repro...

Failure of organisms to adapt to sudden environmental changes may lead to extinction. The type of mating system, by affecting fertility and the strength of sexual selection, may have a major impact on a population's chances to adapt and survive. Here, we use experimental evolution in bulb mites (Rhizoglyphus robini) to examine the effects of the ma...

Background: Based on the assumption that males burdened with fewer deleterious mutations achieve higher reproductive success, the authors hypothesized that sexual selection can decrease the mutation load of populations. Hypothesis: Sexual selection improves viability after induction of deleterious mutations. Organism: The bulb mite, Rhizoglyphus ro...