IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v420y2002i6916d10.1038_nature01191.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sex releases the speed limit on evolution

Author

Listed:
  • Nick Colegrave

    (University of Edinburgh)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Nick Colegrave, 2002. "Sex releases the speed limit on evolution," Nature, Nature, vol. 420(6916), pages 664-666, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:420:y:2002:i:6916:d:10.1038_nature01191
    DOI: 10.1038/nature01191
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01191
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature01191?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. dos Santos, Renato Vieira & da Silva, Linaena Méricy, 2015. "Discreteness induced extinction," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 438(C), pages 17-25.
    2. Alexander Feigel & Avraham Englander & Assaf Engel, 2009. "Sex Is Always Well Worth Its Two-Fold Cost," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(7), pages 1-6, July.
    3. Holmström, Kerstin & Jensen, Henrik Jeldtoft, 2004. "Who runs fastest in an adaptive landscape: sexual versus asexual reproduction," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 337(1), pages 185-195.
    4. Berríos-Caro, Ernesto & Galla, Tobias & Constable, George W.A., 2021. "Switching environments, synchronous sex, and the evolution of mating types," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 28-42.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:420:y:2002:i:6916:d:10.1038_nature01191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.