Extraordinary Sex Ratios
Project description
Most sexually reproducing animals have an equal number of sons and daughters. This is because the sex chromosomes are distributed equally in the germ cells during meiosis (Mendel’s 1st law) in species with chromosomal cex determination, which results in an equal sex ratio (SR). If there for other reasons is an over-production of one sex, evolution is expected to favour the production of the other sex until equity is obtained. It is therefore a puzzle that highly skewed sex ratios persist in many species. To solve this puzzle we need to determine how these species bias the SR of their offspring and whether they can adjust the SR plastically to gain benefits. I will develop a novel method using DNA sequencing of sperm and eggs to determine how fathers and mothers adjust the SR of offspring. This will enable future studies of how SR is biased in wild populations, and to test the hypothesis that extreme SR bias can cause populations to go extinct.
