Sexual versus Asexual Reproduction: Distinct Outcomes in Relative Abundance of Parthenogenetic Mealybugs following Recent Colonization.

ABSTRACT: Asexual reproduction, including parthenogenesis in which embryos develop within a female without fertilization, is assumed to confer advantages over sexual reproduction, which includes a "cost of males." Sexual reproduction largely predominates in animals, however, indicating that this cost is outweighed by the genetic and/or ecological benefits of sexuality, including the acquisition of advantageous mutations occurring in different individuals and the elimination of deleterious mutations. But the evolution of sexual reproduction remains unclear, because we have limited examples that demonstrate the relative success of sexual lineages in the face of competition from asexual lineages in the same environment. Here we investigated a sympatric occurrence of sexual and asexual reproduction in t

SUBMITTER: Tabata J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4920589 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature