IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v468y2010i7320d10.1038_nature09449.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Higher rates of sex evolve in spatially heterogeneous environments

Author

Listed:
  • Lutz Becks

    (University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3B2, Canada
    Zoological Institute, Center for Biological Sciences, University of Cologne)

  • Aneil F. Agrawal

    (University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3B2, Canada)

Abstract

On space and the evolution of sex Although many hypotheses exist to explain the overwhelming presence of sexual reproduction among plants and animals, direct tests of these theories are scarce. In experiments with the rotifer Brachionus calyciflorus, which is capable of both sexual and asexual reproduction, Lutz Becks and Aneil Agrawal have tested the recent theory predicting that spatial heterogeneity can facilitate the evolution of sex. They find that sexual reproduction is favoured in varied habitats that included spatially distinct areas of low- and high-quality food. Homogeneous environments, where food quality does not vary across habitat, do not favour sexual reproduction.

Suggested Citation

  • Lutz Becks & Aneil F. Agrawal, 2010. "Higher rates of sex evolve in spatially heterogeneous environments," Nature, Nature, vol. 468(7320), pages 89-92, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:468:y:2010:i:7320:d:10.1038_nature09449
    DOI: 10.1038/nature09449
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09449
    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/nature09449?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.

    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:468:y:2010:i:7320:d:10.1038_nature09449. 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.