A recommendation of: Chloé Larose, Guillaume Lavanchy, Susana Freitas, Darren J. Parker, Tanja Schwander Facultative parthenogenesis: a transient state in transitions between sex and obligate asexuality stick insects? https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.25.485836

Little attention has been paid to the consequences of long-term asexual reproduction for sequence evolution in diploid or polyploid eukaryotic organisms. Some elementary theory shows that the amount of neutral sequence divergence between two alleles of a protein-coding gene in an asexual individual will be greater than that in a sexual species by a factor of 2tu, where t is the number of genera...

The long-term persistence of completely asexual species is unexpected. Although asexuality has short-term evolutionary advantages, a lack of genetic recombination leads to the accumulation over time of deleterious mutations. The loss of individual fitness as a result of accumulated deleterious mutations is expected to lead to reduced population fitness and possible lineage extinction. Persisten...

Ecological theories of sexual reproduction assume that sexuality is advantageous in certain conditions, for example, in biotically or abiotically more heterogeneous environments. Such theories thus could be tested by comparative studies. However, the published results of these studies are rather unconvincing. Here, we present the results of a new comparative study based exclusively on the ancie...

Toxoplasma gondii is an apicomplexan parasite that infects human and almost all warm-blooded animals. The life cycle of the parasite includes an asexual reproduction in intermediate hosts (Mammals and birds) and a sexual reproduction in definitive hosts (Felidae). Cats are both the intermediate and the definitive host for T. gondii. The aim of this study was to investigate anti-T. gondii antibo...

Abstract Given molecular genetic data from diploid individuals that, at present, reproduce mostly or exclusively asexually without recombination, an important problem in evolutionary biology is detecting evidence of past sexual reproduction (i.e., meiosis and mating) and recombination (both meiotic and mitotic). However, currently there is a lack of computational tools for carrying out such a s...

Flowering plants possess an unrivaled diversity of mechanisms for achieving sexual and asexual reproduction, often simultaneously. The commonest type of asexual reproduction is clonal growth (vegetative propagation) in which parental genotypes (genets) produce vegetative modules (ramets) that are capable of independent growth, reproduction, and often dispersal. Clonal growth leads to an expansi...

Despite the two-fold reproductive advantage of asexual over sexual reproduction, the majority of eukaryotic species are sexual. Why sex is so widespread is still unknown and remains one of the most important unanswered questions in evolutionary biology. Although there are several hypothesized mechanisms for the maintenance of sex, all require assumptions that may limit their applicability. I su...