Understanding how shared between-sex genetic variance constrains the evolution of sexual dimorphism (2014–2017)

Abstract:
Differences between males and females in the expression of shared traits have been of lasting interest to biologists. One of the fundamental, yet poorly understood, questions is to what extent does a common genome restrict the independent evolution of the sexes. I propose a novel way of examining the degree to which the shared genetic architecture restricts the evolution of the sexes and the costs this imposes on population fitness. The results from the proposed experiments will give a clearer picture of how current measures reflect the true genetic constraint imposed on the sexes from a shared genetic architecture.
Grant type:
ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
Funded by:
Australian Research Council