Authors: Olivia Frary, Carl Hjelmen
Mentors: Carl Hjelmen
Insitution: Utah Valley University
Previous work has shown that there are significant differences in lifespan between sexes of the same species. Whether it is an XY or ZW system, the heterogametic sex dies earlier. There are thought to be many factors that contribute to the difference in lifespan between the sexes. This research aims to investigate this relationship further by digging deeper into the degree of differences between the heteromorphic sex chromosomes. We want to determine whether the degree of differentiation correlates with the lifespan differences in species. The comparison of total genome size between the sexes of multiple species are used to find the difference in the size of their sex chromosomes, which is then compared to longevity data on the species to determine a relationship. This genome size data comes from publicly available databases and literature. These comparisons are made using comparative phylogenetic methods in order to account for evolutionary relatedness utilizing a newly constructed phylogenetic tree. All analyses are completed in R and include PGLS (Phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares) and measures of phylogenetic signal (Pagel’s lambda, Blomberg’s K). We will discuss the results of the comparative phylogenetic analyses and any patterns seen regarding longevity.