Schilthuizen, Menno and Craze, Paul Graham and Cabanban, Annadel Sarmiento and A., Davison and Stone, J. R. and Gittenberger, Edmund and Scott, B. J. (2007) Sexual selection maintains whole-body chiral dimorphism in snails. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 20 (5). pp. 1941-1949. ISSN 1010-061X
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Abstract
Although the vast majority of higher animals are fixed for one chiral morph or another, the cause for this directionality is known in only a few cases. In snails, for example, rare individuals of the opposite coil are unable to mate with individuals of normal coil, so directionality is maintained by frequency-dependent selection. The snail subgenus Amphidromus presents an unexplained exception, because dextral (D) and sinistral (S) individuals occur sympatrically in roughly equal proportions (so-called 'antisymmetry') in most species. Here we show that in Amphidromus there is sexual selection for dimorphism, rather than selection for monomorphism. We found that matings between D and S individuals occur more frequently than expected by chance. Anatomical investigations showed that the chirality of the spermatophore and the female reproductive tract probably allow a greater fecundity in such inter-chiral matings. Computer simulation confirms that under these circumstances, sustained dimorphism is the expected outcome. © 2007 The Authors.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Keyword: | Amphidromus, Balanced polymorphism, Chirality, Gastropoda, Malaysia |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QL Zoology > QL1-991 Zoology > QL360-599.82 Invertebrates |
| Department: | INSTITUTE > Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation |
| Depositing User: | ADMIN ADMIN |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Apr 2011 17:56 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Oct 2017 12:31 |
| URI: | https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/2880 |
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