Alternative evolutionary outcomes following endosymbiont-mediated selection on male mating preference alleles

Abstract

In many arthropods, intracellular bacteria, such as those of the genus Wolbachia, may spread through host populations as a result of cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). Here, there is sterility or reduced fertility in crosses between infected males and uninfected females. As the bacterium is maternally inherited, the reduced fertility of uninfected females increases the frequency of the infection. If the transmission fidelity of the bacterium is less than 100%, the bacterium cannot invade from a low frequency, but if its frequency exceeds a threshold, it increases to a high, stable, equilibrium frequency. We explore the expected evolutionary dynamics of mutant alleles that cause their male bearers to avoid mating with uninfected females. For alleles which create this avoidance behaviour conditional upon the male being infected, there is a wide zone of parameter space that allows the preference allele to drive Wolbachia from the population when it would otherwise stably persist. There is also a wide zone of parameter space that allows a joint stable equilibrium for the Wolbachia and a polymorphism for the preference allele. When the male's avoidance of uninfected females is unconditional, the preference allele's effect on Wolbachia frequency is reduced, but there is a narrow range of values for the transmission rate and CI fertility that allow an unconditional preference allele to drive Wolbachia from the population, in a process driven by positive linkage disequilibrium between Wolbachia and the preference allele. The possibility of the evolution of preference could hamper attempts to manipulate wild populations through Wolbachia introductions.

Keywords: Wolbachia; cytoplasmic incompatibility; evolutionary model; male preference.