The contribution of female meiotic drive to the evolution of neo-sex chromosomes

Sex chromosomes undergo rapid turnover in certain taxonomic groups. One of the mechanisms of sex chromosome turnover involves fusions between sex chromosomes and autosomes. Sexual antagonism, heterozygote advantage, and genetic drift have been proposed as the drivers for the fixation of this evolutionary event. However, all empirical patterns of the prevalence of multiple sex chromosome systems across different taxa cannot be simply explained by these three mechanisms. In this study, we propose that female meiotic drive may contribute to the evolution of neo-sex chromosomes. The results of this study showed that in mammals, the XY1Y2 sex chromosome system is more prevalent in species with karyotypes of more bi-armed chromosomes, whereas the X1X2Y sex chromosome system is more prevalent in species with predominantly acrocentric chromosomes. In species where bi-armed chromosomes are favored by female meiotic drive, X-autosome fusions (XY1Y2 sex chromosome system) will be also favored by f...