Evolution: The End of an Ancient Asexual Scandal
نویسنده
چکیده
Bdelloid rotifers were believed to have persisted and diversified in the absence of sex. Two papers now show they exchange genes with each other, via horizontal gene transfers as known in bacteria and/or via other forms of non-canonical sex.
منابع مشابه
Ancient asexual scandals.
Asexual organisms that are descended from ancient asexual lineages defy current thinking on the evolution of sexual reproduction; theoreticians have been anxious to explain away their existence. However, a number of groups of organisms, from ferns to rotifers, have been suggested to be anciently asexual, and favourable evidence is being accumulated. Furthermore, new techniques for assessing cla...
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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...
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Determining the evolutionary age of asexual lineages should help in inferring the temporal scale under which asexuality and sex evolve and assessing selective factors involved in the evolution of asexuality. We used 416 bp of the mitochondrial COI gene to infer phylogenetic relationships of virtually all known Timema walkingstick species, including extensive intraspecific sampling for all five ...
متن کاملLost and Found: The Secret Sex Lives of Bdelloid Rotifers.
FIFTEEN years ago, Mark Welch and Meselson published a landmark paper that threw down a gauntlet to evolutionary biologists. They presented the first compelling molecular evidence that a large group of animals called bdelloid rotifers had been evolving for many millions of years without sex (Mark Welch and Meselson 2000). Their findings challenged the importance of sexual reproduction for long-...
متن کاملVariation in asexual lineage age in Potamopyrgus antipodarum, a New Zealand snail.
Asexual lineages are thought to be subject to rapid extinction because they cannot generate recombinant offspring. Accordingly, extant asexual lineages are expected to be of recent derivation from sexual individuals. We examined this prediction by using mitochondrial DNA sequence data to estimate asexual lineage age in populations of a freshwater snail (Potamopyrgus antipodarum) native to New Z...
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Current Biology
دوره 26 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2016