Anciently asexual bdelloid rotifers escape lethal fungal parasites by drying up and blowing away.

Spatial and temporal escape from fungal parasitism in natural communities of anciently asexual bdelloid rotifers.

Sexual reproduction is costly, but it is nearly ubiquitous among plants and animals, whereas obligately asexual taxa are rare and almost always short-lived. The Red Queen hypothesis proposes that sex overcomes its costs by enabling organisms to keep pace with coevolving parasites and pathogens. If so, the few cases of stable long-term asexuality ought to be found in groups whose coevolutionary ...

Evidence for “ inter - and intraspecific horizontal genetic transfers ” between anciently asexual 1 bdelloid rotifers is explained by cross - contamination 2 3

Taking a cue from the silver screen.

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 327 29 JANUARY 2010 497 COVER Spore-bearing fungal parasites emerge from the digested corpses of three bdelloid rotifers. These freshwater invertebrates (length <0.5 millimeters) present an evolutionary puzzle because they have reproduced without sex for millions of years but have not been driven extinct by relentlessly coevolving parasites. Bdelloids can escape f...

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...

Sexual Species Are Separated by Larger Genetic Gaps than Asexual Species in Rotifers

Why organisms diversify into discrete species instead of showing a continuum of genotypic and phenotypic forms is an important yet rarely studied question in speciation biology. Does species discreteness come from adaptation to fill discrete niches or from interspecific gaps generated by reproductive isolation? We investigate the importance of reproductive isolation by comparing genetic discret...