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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences logoLink to Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
. 2001 Oct 22;268(1481):2155–2161. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2001.1780

Sexual selection at the protein level drives the extraordinary divergence of sex-related genes during sympatric speciation.

G S Van Doorn 1, P C Luttikhuizen 1, F J Weissing 1
PMCID: PMC1088860  PMID: 11600080

Abstract

An increasing number of molecular studies are indicating that, in a wide variety of species, genes directly related to fertilization evolve at extraordinarily high rates. We try to gain insight into the dynamics of this rapid evolution and its underlying mechanisms by means of a simple theoretical model. In the model, sexual selection and sympatric speciation act together in order to drive rapid divergence of gamete recognition proteins. In this process, intraspecific competition for fertilizations enlarges male gamete protein variation by means of evolutionary branching, which initiates sympatric speciation. In addition, avoidance of competition for fertilizations between the incipient species drives the rapid evolution of gamete recognition proteins. This mechanism can account for both strong stabilizing selection on gamete recognition proteins within species and rapid divergence between species. Moreover, it can explain the empirical finding that the rate of divergence of fertilization genes is not constant, but highest between closely related species.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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