posted
Are there any studies of a Y-drive segregation distortion (if I have the jargon right) occurring in nature to the point of local extinction?
In case I got the jargon wrong, this is the phenomenon I'm interested in: A gene arises on the Y chromosome which makes all the offspring of the rodent (?) male, and also larger and more aggressive. Due to the advantage in mating fights, this gene spreads rapidly through the population until every local rodent is male, at which point the population crashes and the area is recolonised from outside. My google-fu brings me a lot of papers on segregation distortion, Y-drive versus X-drive versus autosomal, a few computer simulations, and reconstructions of ancient arms races in which a counter-mutation arose on the female side (!); but I cannot find any paper where the scenario I describe above was actually observed. Have we ever seen this happen?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
