DSSS - The function and evolution of sexually antagonistic genetic variation in fruit flies

The evolution of sexual dimorphism is constrained by a shared genome, leading to ‘sexual antagonism’ where different alleles at given loci are favoured by selection in males and females. Despite its wide taxonomic incidence, we know relatively little about the identity, genomic location and evolutionary dynamics of antagonistic genetic variants. Here, I describe our work in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to characterise genome-wide sexually antagonistic variation. I review previous work using a combination of GWAS and population genomics to identify sexually antagonistic candidate loci, infer their function and assess their evolution across populations and species. I also present new results that put these earlier findings into context, by assessing the contribution of sexual antagonism to genome-wide balanced polymorphisms and evaluate the importance of sexual antagonism as a force maintaining heritable genetic variation for fitness.