Synergy from reproductive division of labor and genetic complexity drive the evolution of sex

摘要

Computer experiments that mirror the evolutionary dynamics of sexual andasexual organisms as they occur in nature, tested features proposed to explainthe evolution of sexual recombination. Results show that this evolution isbetter described as a network of interactions between possible sexual forms,including diploidy, thelytoky, facultative sex, assortation, bisexuality, anddivision of labor between the sexes, rather than a simple transition fromparthenogenesis to sexual recombination. Diploidy was shown to be fundamentalfor the evolution of sex; bisexual reproduction emerged only among anisogamicdiploids with a synergistic division of reproductive labor; and facultative sexwas more likely to evolve among haploids practicing assortative mating. Lookingat the evolution of sex as a complex system through individual basedsimulations, explains better the diversity of sexual strategies known to existin nature, compared to classical analytical models