Driven Apart: The Evolution of Ploidy Differences between the Sexes under Antagonistic Selection

Sexual reproduction in eukaryotes implies a biphasic life cycle with alternating haploid and diploid phases. The nature of the biphasic life cycle varies markedly across taxa, and often either the diploid or the haploid phase is predominant. Why some taxa spend a major part of their life cycle as diploids and others as haploids remains a conundrum. Furthermore, ploidy levels may not only vary across life cycle phases but may also differ between males and females. The existence of two life cycle phases and two sexes bears a high potential for antagonistic selection, which in turn may influence the evolution of ploidy levels. We explored the evolution of ploidy levels when selection depends on both ploidy and sex. Our analyses show that antagonistic selection may drive the ploidy levels between males and females apart. In a subsequent step, we explicitly explored the evolution of arrhenotoky (i.e., haploid males and diploid females) in the context of antagonistic selection. Our model shows that selection on arrhenotoky depends on male fitness but evolves regardless of the fitness consequences to females. Overall we provide a plausible explanation for the evolution of sex differences in ploidy levels, a principle that can be extended to any system with asymmetric inheritance.