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Bengt-Olle Bengtsson

Bengt Olle Bengtsson

Professor emeritus

Bengt-Olle Bengtsson

Genetic variation in organisms with sexual and asexual reproduction

Author

  • Bengt Olle Bengtsson

Summary, in English

The genetic variation in a partially asexual organism is investigated by two models suited for different time scales. Only selectively neutral variation is considered. Model 1 shows, by the use of a coalescence argument, that three sexually derived individuals per generation are sufficient to give a population the same pattern of allelic variation as found in fully sexually reproducing organisms. With less than one sexual event every third generation, the characteristic pattern expected for asexual organisms appear, with strong allelic divergence between the gene copies in individuals. At intermediary levels of sexuality, a complex situation reigns. The pair-wise allelic divergence under partial sexuality exceeds, however, always the corresponding value under full sexuality. These results apply to large populations with stable reproductive systems. In a more general framework, Model 2 shows that a small number of sexual individuals per generation is sufficient to make an apparently asexual population highly genotypically variable. The time scale in terms of generations needed to produce this effect is given by the population size and the inverse of the rate of sexuality.

Department/s

  • MEMEG
  • Evolutionary Genetics

Publishing year

2003

Language

English

Pages

189-199

Publication/Series

Journal of evolutionary biology

Volume

16

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Topic

  • Biological Sciences

Keywords

  • allelic variation
  • coalescence times
  • genotypic
  • variation
  • selfing
  • partial asexuality
  • clonal diversity
  • partial sexuality

Status

Published

Research group

  • Evolutionary Genetics

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1420-9101