Fighting Through the Heat: How Male Aggression Influences Demography Under Recurrent Heatwaves.

ABSTRACT: Sexual selection is a potent evolutionary force that can enhance adaptation and reduce mutational load, while simultaneously reducing survival, or causing sexual conflict that reduces fitness of one or both sexes. Many populations face extreme, short-term stress events like heatwaves. The combined effects of sexual and environmental selection on population demography during and after such events remain poorly understood, even though such combined effects could be crucial for the persistence of small, endangered populations under climate change. In this study, we investigated how male aggression affects survival in a population during environmental stress. This was done by manipulating the expression of an aggressive male fighter morph in small populations of the male-dimorphic mite Sanc

SUBMITTER: Porwal N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12446712 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature