Fig. 6

Sexual conflict over the inheritance of paternal mitochondria. The evolutionarily stable value of paternal leakage (π _ESS) depends on whether the maternal (red line) or paternal (blue line) nucleus controls mitochondrial inheritance. This is shown for a weak epistasis (ξ = 1.2) and b strong epistasis (ξ = 2.0) across a range of mutation rates (μ). π _ESS(mat) = 0 beyond a threshold mutation rate, favouring complete uniparental inheritance and no paternal leakage. In contrast, π _ESS(pat) = 0 declines as μ increases and is always greater than zero, favouring some degree of mitochondrial mixing. The number of mitochondria per cell was set to M = 50