Abstract
In the natural world, sex prevails, despite its costs. Although much effort has been dedicated to identifying the intrinsic costs of sex (e.g., the cost of males), few studies have identified the ecological fitness consequences of sex. Furthermore, correlated biological traits that differ between sexuals and asexuals may alter these costs, or even render the typical costs of sex irrelevant. We conducted a large‐scale, multisite, reciprocal transplant using multiple sexual and asexual genotypes of a native North American wildflower to show that sexual genotypes have reduced lifetime fitness, despite lower herbivory. We separated the effects of sex from those of hybridity, finding that overwinter survival is elevated in asexuals regardless of hybridity, but herbivores target hybrid asexuals more than nonhybrid asexual or sexual genotypes. Survival is lowest in homozygous sexual lineages, implicating inbreeding depression as a cost of sex. Our results show that the consequences of sex are shaped not just by sex itself, but by complex natural environments, correlated traits, and the identity and availability of mates.
Highlights
Despite over a century of research, sex remains a fundamental mystery in evolutionary biology
Despite widespread attention to the genetic processes maintaining sex, the ecological context in which sex occurs has received less attention. This is a crucial gap in our knowledge, as the processes governing sexual/asexual dynamics occur in complex natural environments
No differences in fecundity: We examined the conditional portion of the zeroinflated negative binomial generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs), which analyzed fecundity
Summary
Despite over a century of research, sex remains a fundamental mystery in evolutionary biology. Our understanding of the ecology of sex stems largely from decades of experimental work on the freshwater snail, which has established sterilizing trematode parasites as the primary selective agent maintaining sex via frequencydependent selection. This system offers a key example of Red Queen dynamics, wherein sexual reproduction generates novel lineages that avoid infection. This research shows that the abiotic and biotic environment operate in concert to shape sexual/asexual dynamics in the natural world Both ecology and its interactions with a system’s biological features provide the context necessary to pinpoint the real-life costs and benefits of sex (Neiman et al 2018)
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