Consequences of Asexual Reproduction

This post is a copy from my (Randy) personal website, but I thought it would be helpful to copy it here

Over the past century, scientists batted around ideas explaining the scarcity of asexual reproduction, which led to numerous hypotheses regarding the costs of asexual reproduction. Here is a list containing many of these hypotheses.

• Variation and Selection Hypothesis

“If we bear in mind that in sexual propagation twice as many individuals are required in order to produce any number of descendants and if we further remember the important morphological differentiations which must take place in order to render sexual propagation possible, we are led to the conviction that sexual propagation must confer immense benefits upon organic life. I believe that such beneficial results will be found in the fact that sexual propagation may be regarded as a source of individual variability, furnishing material for the operation of natural selection.” (Weismann, 1887 p. 609)

• Weismann, A. (1887). On the signification of the polar globules. Nature. 36:607-609. doi:10.1038/036607a0
• Castle, W.E. (1916). Variability under inbreeding and crossbreeding. American Naturalist. 50(591):178-183.
• Castle, W.E. (1930). The significance of sexuality. American Naturalist. 64(695):481-494.
• East, E.M. (1930). The role of reproduction in evolution. American Naturalist. 52(618/619):273-289.
• Morgan, T.H. (1913). Heredity and sex. New York: Columbia University Press
• Svedelius, N. (1927). Alternation of generations in relation to reduction division. Botanical Gazette. 83(4):362-384.


• Müller's Ratchet
  
  • Müller, H.J. (1964). The relation of recombination to mutational advance. Mutation Research. 1:2-9. doi:10.1016/0027-5107(64)90047-8
  
  
• Mutational Meltdown Hypothesis
  
  • Lynch, M.L., Bürger, R., Butcher, D., Gabriel, W. (1993). The utational meltdown in asexual populations. Evolution. 84(5):339-344. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a111354
  • Lynch, M.L., Conery, J., Bürger, R. (1995). Mutational meltdowns in sexual populations. Evolution. 49(6):1067-1080. doi:10.2307/2410432
  
  
• The Red Queen Hypothesis
  
  • An hypothesis to account for the maintenance of sex within populations. (1977). Evolutionary Theory. 3:191-194. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a111354
  • Van Valen, L. (1973). A new evolutionary law. Evolutionary Theory. 1:1-30.
  • Hamilton W.D., Axelrod R., Tanese R. (1990). Sexual reproduction as an adaptation to resist parasites (A review). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 87(9):3566-3573. doi:10.1073/pnas.87.9.3566
  • Mata-Silva V., Bursey C.R., Johnson J.D. (2008). Gut parasites of two syntopic species of whiptail lizards, Aspidoscelis marmorata and Aspidoscelis tesselata from the Northern Chihuahuan Desert. Sociedad Herpetológica de México. 16(1):1-4.
  • Moritz C., Mccallum H., Donnellan S., Roberts J.D. (1991). Parasite loads in parthenogenetic and sexual lizards (Heteronotia binoei): Support for the Red Queen hypothesis.. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 244(1310):145-149. doi:10.1098/rspb.1991.0063
  
  
• Parental Care Hypothesis
• Lloyd, D.G. (1980). Benefits and handicaps of sexual reproduction. In: Hecht, M.K., Steere, W.C., Wallace, B. Evolutionary Biology. Springer, Boston, MA.



• 2x2 Classification of Variant and Selection Hypothesis
• Maynard Smith J. (1978). The evolution of sex. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  
• Kondrashov, A.S. (1988). Deleterious mutations and the evolution of sexual reproduction. Nature. 336(6198):435-440. doi:10.1038/336435a0
  
• Maynard Smith, J. (1988). The evolution of recombination. In: The evolution of recombination. The evolution of sex: an examination of current ideas. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer; 106-125.


• Genetic Variability via Recombination
  
  • Fisher, R.A. (1930). The genetical theory of natural selection. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
    
  • Müller, H.J. (1932). Some genetic aspects of sex. American Naturalist. 66:118-138. doi:10.1086/280418
  
  
• DNA Repair Hypothesis
  
  • Dougherty, E.G. (1955). Comparative evolution and the origin of sexuality. Systematic Biology. 4(4)145-169. doi:10.2307/2411667
  • Bernstein, C., Bernstein, H. (1991). Aging, sex, and DNA repair. San Diego: Academic Press.
  • Michod, R.E. (1993). Genetic error, sex, and diploidy. Journal of Heredity. 84(5)360-371. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a111357


• Sexual Selection Hypothesis

"The advantages of sexual reproduction with two different sexes are not limited to genetic heterogeneity of the progeny."

• Geodakyan, V.A. (1965). The role of sexes in transmission and transformation of genetic information. Problemy Peredachi Informatsii. 1:105-112 (in Russian).
• Trivers, R. (1976). Sexual selection and resource-accruing abilities in Anolis garmani. Evolution. 30(2):253-269. doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1976.tb00908.x
• Charlesworth, D., Charlesworth, B. The effects of selection in the gametophyte stage on mutational load. Evolution. 46(3):703-720. doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1992.tb02077.x