Jonathan Parrett

Adam Mickiewicz University | UAM · Faculty of Biology

Sexual selection and sexual antagonism are important drivers of eco-evolutionary processes. The evolution of traits shaped by these processes depends on their genetic architecture, which remain poorly studied. Here, implementing a quantitative genetics approach using diallel crosses of the bulb mite, Rhizoglyphus robini, we investigated the genetic...

The evolution of costly traits such as deer antlers and peacock trains, which drove the formation of Darwinian sexual selection theory, has been suggested to both reflect and affect patterns of genetic variance across the genome, but direct tests are missing. Here, we used an evolve and resequence approach to reveal patterns of genome-wide diversit...

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...

Agricultural expansion is a primary driver of biodiversity decline in forested regions of the tropics. Consequently, it is important to understand the conservation value of remnant forests in production landscapes. In a tropical landscape dominated by oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), we characterized faunal communities across eight taxa occurring with...

Temperature change is an often‐assumed, but rarely‐tested, mechanism by which sensitive species may decline in forest landscapes following habitat degradation, fragmentation and destruction. Traits mediate how species respond to environmental change, with physiological, morphological and behavioural traits key to determining the response of ectothe...

Understanding the impacts of natural and anthropogenic barriers to animal movement allows insights into how species assemblages form and diverge, and has implications for the effective design of protected areas and management of human-modified landscapes. Dung beetles are a functionally important taxon that can be sampled relatively easily with dun...

When competition between males for mates is intense, it is common to find that some males will adopt alternative tactics for acquiring fertilizations, often involving the use of ‘sneak’ tactics whereby males avoid precopulatory contests. These alternative tactics are sometimes associated with discrete differences in male morphology, with sneak male...

Sexual selection is predicted to influence population persistence because skew in male reproductive success may facilitate the purging of mutation load. We manipulated the strength of sexual selection in populations of Indian meal moths, Plodia interpunctella, by adjusting adult sex ratios to be either male- or female-biased, leading to strong and...

When competition between males for mates is intense it is common to find that some males will adopt alternative tactics for acquiring fertilisations, often involving the use of sneak tactics whereby males avoid contests. These alternative tactics are sometimes associated with discrete differences in male morphology, with sneak males investing less...

The effect of sexual selection on species persistence is unclear. The cost of bearing ornaments or armaments might increase extinction risk, but sexual selection can also enhance the spread of beneficial alleles and increase the removal of deleterious alleles, potentially reducing extinction risk. 35 Here we investigate the effect of sexual selecti...

All Lepidoptera produce two sperm types: normal, nucleated 'eupyrene' sperm and anucleate 'apyrene' sperm. One hypothesis for the evolution of apyrene sperm suggests that they act to reduce female remating rate. Apyrene sperm require less resources to produce than do eupyrene sperm, and could delay remating by females by acting as a 'cheap filler',...

Strong sexual selection has been reported to both enhance and hinder the adaptive capacity and persistence of populations when exposed to novel environments. Consequently, how sexual selection influences population adaption and persistence under stress remains widely debated. Here, we present two empirical investigations of the fitness consequences...