A longstanding question in evolutionary biology is how sexual selection influences how entire genomes develop. Sexual selection is where individuals with certain traits have higher reproductive success, leading to the spread of those traits throughout a species.
A study by me and my colleagues at the Milner Centre for Evolution has uncovered a significant link between the difference in body size between males and females – known as sexual size dimorphism (SSD) – and genetic changes in mammals. These findings provide new insights into how sexual selection shapes the structure and function of the genome.
