Odour cues and sexual selection in the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

TL;DRAbstract

A large part of the studies carried out on odour-related mate choice in respect to MHC have concentrated on functional aspects of the phenomenon. The ones that show sexual selection for heterozygosity at the MHC concentrate on systems with few strains of MHC I and II congenic laboratory populations of mice and rats. Thus inbreeding avoidance was thought to be the main selective force creating MHC diversity through mate choice. Only a few studies have tried to deal with the full natural diversity of MHC genes. Surveys in natural populations have revealed striking diversity in MHC alleles in many species, with more than 30 alleles per population per locus. In particular when MHC loci are duplicated, which is the case for almost all mammals, the combination of distinct haplotypes becomes very large, so that the chances of choosing a partner with identical MHC haplotypes become very unlikely. This makes inbreeding avoidance as the origin of observed MHC diversity in natural\npopulations qu

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