Reproductive assurance drives transitions to self-fertilization in experimental Caenorhabditis elegans

Ivo M Chelo,Ioannis Theologidis,Henrique Teotónio,Christine Goy

doi:10.1186/preaccept-1381714571364387

Abstract

Reproductive assurance drives transitions to self-fertilization in experimental Caenorhabditis elegans

Highlights

Evolutionary transitions from outcrossing between individuals to selfing are partly responsible for the great diversity of animal and plant reproduction systems
Despite the considerable efforts trying to demonstrate the hypothesis of reproductive assurance, empirical evidence is mixed [18,19,20,21], and whether individual selection can drive the transition to selfing has not been subject to direct experimental tests; but see [22,23,24]
We have presented comprehensive evidence supporting the hypothesis that individual selection among selfers and outcrossers can drive the transition from dioecy to androdioecy, or to effective monoecy, when there is limited outcrossing in novel environments

Summary

Introduction

Evolutionary transitions from outcrossing between individuals to selfing are partly responsible for the great diversity of animal and plant reproduction systems. Transitions to selfing have repeatedly occurred during evolution even though this breeding mode usually leads to inbreeding depression [1,7], restricts the generation of potentially adaptive genetic diversity [8,9,10] and may result in Despite the considerable efforts trying to demonstrate the hypothesis of reproductive assurance, empirical evidence is mixed [18,19,20,21], and whether individual selection can drive the transition to selfing has not been subject to direct experimental tests; but see [22,23,24] This is partly because hermaphroditism and selfing occur in multiple forms, not all of which clearly assure population persistence in environments with limited opportunity for outcrossing [17,25,26,27,28]. It is largely unknown how selection of standing genetic diversity specific to breeding mode [41,42], such as the purging of deleterious recessive alleles [43,44,45] or the maintenance of coevolved sets of loci [46,47,48,49], relate to reproductive assurance and may feedback on the evolution of selfing rates

Methods

Results

Conclusion