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Sex is a costly and inefficient way to produce offspring. Sexual species must waste time and energy acquiring mates, which could be used for other functions, and may suffer recombinant load when they mix together genomes which have been favoured by selection. In isogamous species, the very existence of males represents a waste of resources, since males do not reproduce directly. So why do so many eukaryotic species persist with sex? We examine the costs and benefits of sex using the facultative green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to try to understand both why sex evolved and is maintained in nature.
Colegrave, N. (2002) Sex releases the speed limit on evolution. Nature 420, 664-666
Colegrave,
N., O. Kaltz, and G.
Bell. (2002). The ecology and genetics of fitness in Chlamydomonas VII. The dynamics of adaptation
after a single
episode of sex. Evolution 56, 14-21
This site is no longer maintained and has been left for archival purposes
Text and links may be out of date