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Abstract

Gene drive technology promises to deliver on some ofthe global challenges humanity faces today in health care, agricul-ture, and conservation. However, there is a limited understandingof the consequences of releasing self-perpetuating transgenic organ-isms into wild populations under complex ecological conditions.In this study, we analyze the impact of three such complexities—mate choice, mating systems, and spatial mating network—on thepopulation dynamics for two distinct classes of modification genedrive systems. All three factors had a high impact on the modelingoutcome. First, we demonstrate that distortion-based gene drivesappear to be more robust against mate choice than viability-basedgene drives. Second, wefind that gene drive spread is much fasterfor higher degrees of polygamy. Including afitness cost, the driveis fastest for intermediate levels of polygamy. Finally, the spread ofa gene drive is faster and more effective when the individuals havefewer connections in a spatial mating network. Our results high-light the need to include mating complexities when modeling theproperties of gene drives, such as release thresholds, timescales, andpopulation-level consequences. This inclusion will enable a moreconfident prediction of the dynamics of engineered gene drives andpossibly even inform about the origin and evolution of natural genedrives.