Haldane's rule in the 21st century

Abstract

Haldane's Rule (HR), which states that 'when in the offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous (heterogametic) sex', is one of the most general patterns in speciation biology. We review the literature of the past 15 years and find that among the ∼85 new studies, many consider taxa that traditionally have not been the focus for HR investigations. The new studies increased to nine, the number of 'phylogenetically independent' groups that comply with HR. They continue to support the dominance and faster-male theories as explanations for HR, although due to increased reliance on indirect data (from, for example, differential introgression of cytoplasmic versus chromosomal loci in natural hybrid zones) unambiguous novel results are rare. We further highlight how research on organisms with sex determination systems different from those traditionally considered may lead to more insight in the underlying causes of HR. In particular, haplodiploid organisms provide opportunities for testing specific predictions of the dominance and faster X chromosome theory, and we present new data that show that the faster-male component of HR is supported in hermaphrodites, suggesting that genes involved in male function may evolve faster than those expressed in the female function.