Abstract
Why females mate as few or as many times as they do is enigmatic, even when gaining direct benefits from the male. Female mating rate lies at the heart of evolutionary biology, as it determines the intensity of sexual selection and the pattern of gene flow within and between populations. This project seeks to quantify the effect of (l) sexual conflict over female mating rate, (2) sexually antagonistic alleles, and (3) pleiotropic effects of temperature adaptation, for variation in female mating rate in a butterfly with paternal investment. This illustrates the need to consider the effect of alleles expressed in both sexes, those only expressed in one sex, and those that have pleiotropic effects on other aspects of individual fitness. This provides the first investigation of the relative importance of these factors for the mating rate of females derived from natural populations.
United Kingdom