No evidence for accumulation of deleterious mutations and fitness degradation in clonal fish hybrids: Abandoning sex without regrets.

ABSTRACT: Despite its inherent costs, sexual reproduction is ubiquitous in nature, and the mechanisms to protect it from a competitive displacement by asexuality remain unclear. Popular mutation-based explanations, like the Muller's ratchet and the Kondrashov's hatchet, assume that purifying selection may not halt the accumulation of deleterious mutations in the nonrecombining genomes, ultimately leading to their degeneration. However, empirical evidence is scarce and it remains particularly unclear whether mutational degradation proceeds fast enough to ensure the decay of clonal organisms and to prevent them from outcompeting their sexual counterparts. To test this hypothesis, we jointly analysed the exome sequences and the fitness-related phenotypic traits of the sexually reproducing fish species

SUBMITTER: Koci J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7540418 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature