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The Group-Level Consequences Of Sexual Conflict In Multigroup Populations, Omar Tonsi Eldakar, Andrew C. Gallup

Biology Faculty Articles

In typical sexual conflict scenarios, males best equipped to exploit females are favored locally over more prudent males, despite reducing female fitness. However, local advantage is not the only relevant form of selection. In multigroup populations, groups with less sexual conflict will contribute more offspring to the next generation than higher conflict groups, countering the local advantage of harmful males. Here, we varied male aggression within-and between-groups in a laboratory population of water striders and measured resulting differences in local population growth over a period of three weeks. The overall pool fitness (i.e., adults produced) of less aggressive pools exceeded …