Reproductive Isolation through Experimental Manipulation of Sexually

15 Promiscuity can drive the evolution of sexual conflict before and after mating occurs. Post16 mating, the male ejaculate can selfishly manipulate female physiology leading to a chemical 17 arms race between the sexes. Theory suggests that drift and sexually antagonistic coevolution 18 can cause allopatric populations to evolve different chemical interactions between the sexes, 19 thereby leading to post mating reproductive barriers and speciation. There is, however, little 20 empirical evidence supporting this form of speciation. We tested this theory by creating an 21 experimental evolutionary model of Drosophila melanogaster populations undergoing 22 different levels of interlocus sexual conflict. We found that sexual conflict can cause 23 reproductive isolation in allopatric populations through the co-evolution of chemical (post 24 mating prezygotic) as well as behavioural (pre-mating) interaction between the sexes. Thus, 25 to our knowledge, we provide the first comprehensive evidence of post mating (as well as pre 26 mating) reproductive barriers due to sexual conflict. 27 . CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/079657 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Oct. 7, 2016;