Abandoning the ship using sex, dispersal or dormancy: multiple escape routes from challenging conditions.

ABSTRACT: Natural populations often experience environments that vary across space and over time, leading to spatio-temporal variation of the fitness of a genotype. If local conditions are poor, organisms can disperse in space (physical movement) or time (dormancy, diapause). Facultatively sexual organisms can switch between asexual and sexual reproduction, and thus have a third option available to deal with maladaptedness: they can engage in sexual reproduction in unfavourable conditions (an 'abandon-ship' response). Sexual reproduction in facultatively sexual organisms is often coupled with dispersal and/or dormancy, while bet-hedging theory at first sight predicts sex, dispersal and dormancy to covary negatively, as they represent different escape mechanisms that could substitute for each other.

SUBMITTER: Gerber N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6125733 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature