{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pgen.1010063","title":"Post-insemination selection dominates pre-insemination selection in driving rapid evolution of male competitive ability","abstract":"Sexual reproduction is a complex process that contributes to differences between the sexes and divergence between species. From a male's perspective, sexual selection can optimize reproductive success by acting on the variance in mating success (pre-insemination selection) as well as the variance in fertilization success (post-insemination selection). The balance between pre- and post-insemination selection has not yet been investigated using a strong hypothesis-testing framework that directly quantifies the effects of post-insemination selection on the evolution of reproductive success. Here we use experimental evolution of a uniquely engineered genetic system that allows sperm production to be turned off and on in obligate male-female populations of Caenorhabditis elegans. We show that enhanced post-insemination competition increases the efficacy of selection and surpasses pre-insemination sexual selection in driving a polygenic response in male reproductive success. We find that after 10 selective events occurring over 30 generations post-insemination selection increased male reproductive success by an average of 5- to 7-fold. Contrary to expectation, enhanced pre-insemination competition hindered selection and slowed the rate of evolution. Furthermore, we found that post-insemination selection resulted in a strong polygenic response at the whole-genome level. Our results demonstrate that post-insemination sexual selection plays a critical role in the rapid optimization of male reproductive fitness. Therefore, explicit consideration should be given to post-insemination dynamics when considering the population effects of sexual selection.","journal":"PLoS Genetics","year":2022,"id":281235,"datarank":0.32958368660043297,"base_score":2.1972245773362196,"endowment":2.1972245773362196,"self_citation_contribution":0.32958368660043297,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.32958368660043297,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":2,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.957,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"figshare":["10.6084/m9.figshare.14902599"]},"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":484242,"name":"Megan Moerdyk‐Schauwecker","orcid":"0009-0001-4348-7512","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583552,"name":"Ruben Lancaster","orcid":"0000-0002-6976-6894","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":827864,"name":"Alexander Smith","orcid":"0000-0001-6924-2014","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":352929,"name":"John H. Willis","orcid":"0000-0002-4263-7347","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":352930,"name":"Patrick C. Phillips","orcid":"0000-0001-7271-342X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":341684,"name":"Katja R. Kasimatis","orcid":"0000-0003-0025-5022","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":64,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:29:07.472902Z","pmid":"35157717","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}