Species Interactions and the Evolution of Sex

@article{Otto2004SpeciesIA,  title={Species Interactions and the Evolution of Sex},  author={Sarah Perin Otto and Scott L. Nuismer},  journal={Science},  year={2004},  volume={304},  pages={1018 - 1020},  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:8599387}}
A population genetics model is developed that circumscribes a broad array of ecological and genetic interactions among species and derives the first general analytical conditions for the impact of species interactions on the evolution of sex.

219 Citations

The red queen coupled with directional selection favours the evolution of sex

The Red Queen hypothesis may help to explain the evolution of sex by contributing a form of persistent selection, which interferes with directional selection at other loci and thereby favours sex and recombination.

Host‐Parasite Coevolution and Selection on Sex through the Effects of Segregation

The advantage of producing novel variation to keep apace of coevolving species has been invoked as a major explanation for the evolution and maintenance of sex (the Red Queen hypothesis). Recent…

An epidemiological model of host–parasite coevolution and sex

The results suggest that epidemiological feedbacks, combined with frequency‐dependent selection, could lead to the long‐term persistence of sex under biologically reasonable conditions.

Eco‐evolutionary feedback promotes Red Queen dynamics and selects for sex in predator populations

    Biology, Environmental Science
    Evolution; international journal of organic…
  • 2016
It is found that a high propensity for sex was indirectly selected and was maintained in rotifer populations within environments containing these eco‐evolutionary dynamics; whereas within environments under constant conditions, predators evolved rapidly to lower levels of sex.

Sex and the Red Queen

There is a need for theory addressing the breadth of conditions under which the Red Queen can favor sex, predictions for the patterns of molecular evolution expected for loci under negative frequency-dependent selection, and empirical research evaluating the strength of parasite-mediated selection in nature and the genetics of susceptibility and infection.

The Evolution of Sex and Recombination in Response to Abiotic or Coevolutionary Fluctuations in Epistasis

This work analyzes the evolution of sex and recombination in a two-species coevolutionary model and finds that intermediate parasite migration rates maximize the degree of local adaptation of the parasite and lead to a higher ES recombination rate in the host.

Diversity and the maintenance of sex by parasites

If parasites are readily transmissible, then sex is most likely to be maintained when host diversity is high, in agreement with the Red Queen hypothesis, and if transmission rates are lower, however, the findings highlight the importance of genetic diversity and its impact on epidemiological dynamics for the maintenance of sex by parasites.

Antagonistic species interaction drives selection for sex in a predator–prey system

Experimental evolution in a predator (rotifer)–prey (algal) system showed that fluctuating population sizes of predator and prey, coupled with a trade‐off in the prey, drove the sort of recurrent environmental change that could provide a benefit to sex in the predator, despite inherent costs.

Similarity Selection and the Evolution of Sex: Revisiting the Red Queen

A population genetic model is presented here that includes both genotypic and similarity selection, allowing them to be directly compared in the same framework and showing that weakly virulent parasites are more likely to favor sex than are highly virulent ones.

Parasites and deleterious mutations: interactions influencing the evolutionary maintenance of sex

It is shown how interactions between these genetic and ecological forces can completely reverse predictions about the evolution of reproductive modes and it is demonstrated that synergistic interactions between infection and deleterious mutations can render sex evolutionarily stable even when there is antagonistic epistasis among deleteriously mutations, thereby widening the conditions for the evolutionary maintenance of sex.
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40 References

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The results suggest that the two processes operating simultaneously may select for sex independent of the exact shape of the function that maps mutation number onto host fitness.

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Modification of traditional models for pathogen-mediated evolution of sex showed that for conditions close to the empirical pattern of genotypic specificity, sex is almost never favoured, casting doubt on current theories arguing that pathogens are the primary selective agent responsible for sexual reproduction.

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Here it is highlighted the advantages that may be gained from considering that multiple mechanisms (environmental and mutational) may be at work, and that interactions between the theories may be very important.

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The results suggest that even moderate effects by parasites combined with reasonable rates of mutation could render sex evolutionary stable against repeated invasion by clones.

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It is proposed that host obligate asexuality can be favoured in the long term, despite the effects of parasites, under the following conditions: the host population structure should approximate a metapopulation, and the hosts or the parasites should exhibit relatively high levels of dispersal.

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P parasite coevolution is superior to previous models of the evolution of sex by supporting the stability of sex under the following challenging conditions: very low fecundity, realistic patterns of genotype fitness and changing environment, and frequent mutation to parthenogenesis, even while sex pays the full 2-fold cost.

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In this paper, it is shown how the mutual antagonism of two species can lead to a cyclical game in which high-recombination alleles can have a large short-term selective advantage in a fully defined genetic model.

The Red Queen and Fluctuating Epistasis: A Population Genetic Analysis of Antagonistic Coevolution

It is found that linkage disequilibria may tend to increase, rather than decrease, additive genetic variance, which is consistent with the idea that selection for recombination is mediated by fluctuating epistasis.

Sex versus non-sex versus parasite

It is shown that with frequency dependence sufficiently intense such models generate cycles, and that in certain states of cycling sexual species easily obtain higher long-term geometric mean fitness than any competing monotypic asexual species or mixture of such.

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