Nature Communications (Mar 2019)

Female genitalia can evolve more rapidly and divergently than male genitalia

  • Leigh W. Simmons,
  • John L. Fitzpatrick

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09353-0
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

Read online

Although male genital shape is known to evolve rapidly in response to sexual selection, relatively little is known about the evolution of female genital shape. Here, the authors show that across onthophagine dung beetles, female genital shape has diverged much more rapidly than male genital shape.