![]() | Sperm Competition and Its Evolutionary Consequences in the Insects One hundred years after Darwin considered how sexual selection shapes the behavioral and morphological characteristics of males for acquiring mates, Parker realized that sexual selection continues after mating through sperm competition. Because females often mate with multiple males before producing offspring, selection favors adaptations that allow males to preempt sperm from previous males and to prevent their own sperm from preemption by future males. Since the 1970s, this area of research has seen exponential growth, and biologists now recognize sperm competition as an evolutionary force that drives such adaptations as mate guarding, genital morphology, and ejaculate chemistry across all animal taxa. The insects have been critical to this research, and they still offer the greatest potential to reveal fully the evolutionary consequences of sperm competition. Leigh W. Simmons is an Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellow and Research Professor in the Department of Zoology, University of Western Australia. He is an Associate Editor for Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology and Executive Editor of Animal Behavior . |
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