Sexual selection and genetic variation: evolve and re-sequence approach

The purpose of the project will be to fill the important gap in our understanding of the process of evolution by checking if evolution of elaborated, sexually selected traits does help to maintain genetic variation within populations. The project will use experimental evolution approach, and the subject of evolution in laboratory will be a mite with very short generation time, in which males vary in expression of elaborated sexually selected trait: thickened legs which are costly to produce and hinder movement but are useful in intersexual combats. Populations will be forced to evolve towards low or high proportion of males with thickened legs, and after 30 generations (about 2 years in laboratory) their genomes will be sequenced to check whether amount of genetic variation is higher in evolutionary lines in which thickened legs are common.