Sex releases the speed limit on evolution

Nick Colegrave ()
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Nick Colegrave: University of Edinburgh

Nature, 2002, vol. 420, issue 6916, 664-666

Abstract: Abstract Explaining the evolutionary maintenance of sex remains a key problem in evolutionary biology1,2,3. One potential benefit of sex is that it may allow a more rapid adaptive response when environmental conditions change, by increasing the efficiency with which selection can fix beneficial mutations4,5,6,7. Here I show that sex can increase the rate of adaptation in the facultatively sexual single-celled chlorophyte Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, but that the benefits of sex depend crucially on the size of the population that is adapting: sex has a marked effect in large populations but little effect in small populations. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the benefits of sex in a novel environment, including stochastic effects in small populations, clonal interference and epistasis between beneficial alleles. These results indicate that clonal interference is important in this system.

Date: 2002
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:420:y:2002:i:6916:d:10.1038_nature01191

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DOI: 10.1038/nature01191

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