Cascading effects of pre-adult survival on sexual selection

Abstract

Sexual selection influences broad-scale patterns of biodiversity. While a large body of research has investigated the effect of mate competition on sexual selection, less work has examined how pre-adult life history influences sexual selection. We used a mathematical framework to explore the influence of pre-adult survival on sexual selection. Our model suggests that pre-adult male mortality will affect the strength of sexual selection when a fixed number of adult males have an advantageous mate-acquisition trait. When a fixed number of males have an advantageous mate-acquisition trait, sexual selection is expected to increase when pre-adult mortality is relatively low. By contrast, if a fixed proportion (rather than number) of adult males have a mate-acquisition trait, pre-adult male mortality is not expected to affect the strength of sexual selection. Further, if the advantageous mating trait affects pre-adult survival, natural and sexual selection can interact to influence the overall selection on the mating trait. Given that pre-adult mortality is often shaped by natural selection, our results highlight conditions under which natural selection can have cascading effects on sexual selection.