High variation in last male sperm precedence and genital morphology in the emerald damselfly Lestes sponsa

In organisms where individuals mate multiply, knowledge on the proportion of offspring sired by the last male to mate (P2) under field conditions is important for a thorough understanding of how sexual selection works in nature. In many insect groups, pronounced intraspecific variation in P2 is commonplace. Interestingly, however, in stark contrast to these observations, compilation of P2 data in dragonflies and damselflies (Odonata) indicate that a high P2, seldom below 0.95, is a feature of this taxon. Here we used double digest restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (ddRADseq) to generate a panel of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with which we could determine paternity and estimate values of P2 in the offspring of 19 field-collected pairs of the emerald damselfly Lestes sponsa. We also estimated the relationship between P2 and male genital shape of 16 males using geometric morphometric analysis. P2 was variable (range=0.0-1.0; mean=0.5), and there was a marginally non-sig...