A population with u deleterious mutations per genome per generation is considered in which only those individuals that carry less than a critical number k of mutations are viable. Besides a large number of loci subject to mutation and selection, the genome contains one or two special loci responsible for the mode of reproduction. Amphimixis vs. apomixis and amphimixis vs. selfing are considered...

1 Studies focused on speciation have tried to explain the emergence of new species 2 but stopped short of studying what it means for the biodiversity patterns such as 3 abundance or diversity. Community ecologist, on the other hand, have studied how 4 such patterns are maintained, but they did not study the processes that formed the 5 basic components of these patterns. We here take advantage o...

The process of biotope occupation by the anenome Metridium sen~le in the absence of pelagic larvae has been investigated by an in situ monitoring experiment lasting from July 1981 to April 1982. This process is composed of several behavioral phases: dispersion of the anemones on the new substrate by h ~ g h locomotory activity, colonization of the 'chosen' habltat by intensive asexual reproduct...

We compare the speed with which a sexual, respectively an asexual, population is able to respond to a biased selective pressure. Our model focuses on the Weismann hypothesis that the extra variation caused by crossing-over and recombination during sexual reproduction allows a sexual population to adapt faster. We find, however, that the extra variation amongst the progeny produced during sexual...

Inferring reproductive and demographic parameters of populations is crucial to our understanding of species ecology and evolutionary potential but can be challenging, especially in partially clonal organisms. Here, we describe a new and accurate method, cloncase, for estimating both the rate of sexual vs. asexual reproduction and the effective population size, based on the frequency of clonemat...

Plant somatic cells have the remarkable ability to regenerate an entire organism. Many species in the genus Kalanchoë, known as "mother of thousands," develop plantlets on the leaf margins. Using key regulators of organogenesis (STM) and embryogenesis (LEC1 and FUS3) processes, we analyzed asexual reproduction in Kalanchoë leaves. Suppression of STM abolished the ability to make plantlets. Here...

The persistence of sexual reproduction is a classic problem in evolutionary biology. The problem stems from the fact that, all else equal, asexual lineages should rapidly replace coexisting sexual individuals due to the cost of producing males in sexual populations. One possible countervailing advantage to sexual reproduction is that, on average, outcrossed offspring are more resistant than com...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Expected life history trade-offs associated with sex differences in reproductive investment are often undetected in seed plants, with the difficulty arising from logistical issues of conducting controlled experiments. By controlling genotype, age and resource status of individuals, a bryophyte was assessed for sex-specific and location-specific patterns of vegetative, asexua...

The ubiquity of sexual reproduction despite its cost has lead to an extensive body of research on the evolution and maintenance of sexual reproduction. Previous work has suggested that sexual reproduction can substantially speed up the rate of adaptation in diploid populations, because sexual populations are able to produce the fittest homozygous genotype by segregation and mating of heterozygo...