Males and females have nearly (or, in some cases, entirely) identical genomes, but their evolutionary interests often diverge. This divergence is rooted in the asymmetric investment in reproduction between the sexes, which results in some traits being favoured by selection in one sex but disfavoured in the other. This phenomenon, known as sexual conflict, can manifest both at the phenotypic and genetic levels.

The past decades of research have been full of theoretical and empirical advances demonstrating the ubiquity of sexual conflict and its role in driving phenotypic divergence of the sexes. However, studies of how the coevolutionary patterns resulting from sexual conflict operate at the genetic level remain lacking. This scarcity is perhaps due to two factors: first, the loci involved in genetic conflict can be difficult to fine-map; and second, the biological systems in which we understand sexual conflict are relatively genetically intractable.