Meeting Abstract
Morphological and functional traits are shaped by various parallel and opposing selection pressures. Individuals within a species may experience these pressures differently depending on age or sex, creating the potential for intragenomic conflict. Conflict between males and females over sex-specific expression of morphological traits in particular has received a great deal of attention in various animal taxa, but the functional consequences of these conflicts in terms of integrative traits such as whole-organism performance are less well understood. We conducted a large breeding experiment to quantify the phenotypic and genetic variation in both shape and jumping performance in the Australian black field cricket, Teleogyllus commodus. By doing so, we are also able to estimate the functional consequences of intralocus sexual conflict in terms of an ecologically relevant performance trait, and to link morphology and performance to other key fitness-related aspects of the integrative phenotype in this species.
