Department of Aquatic Ecology, EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
J Evol Biol. 2010 May;23(5):1013-23. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.01972.x. Epub 2010 Mar 19.
The restrictive assumptions associated with purely genetic and purely ecological mechanisms suggest that neither of the two forces, in isolation, can offer a general explanation for the evolutionary maintenance of sex. Consequently, attention has turned to pluralistic models (i.e. models that apply both ecological and genetic mechanisms). Existing research has shown that combining mutation accumulation and parasitism allows restrictive assumptions about genetic and parasite parameter values to be relaxed while still predicting the maintenance of sex. However, several empirical studies have shown that deleterious mutations and parasitism can reduce fitness to a greater extent than would be expected if the two acted independently. We show how interactions between these genetic and ecological forces can completely reverse predictions about the evolution of reproductive modes. Moreover, we demonstrate that synergistic interactions between infection and deleterious mutations can render sex evolutionarily stable even when there is antagonistic epistasis among deleterious mutations, thereby widening the conditions for the evolutionary maintenance of sex.
纯粹的遗传和纯粹的生态机制相关的限制假设表明，这两种力量单独作用都不能为性别的进化维持提供普遍解释。因此，人们的注意力转向了多元化的模型（即应用生态和遗传机制的模型）。现有研究表明，将突变积累和寄生虫结合起来，可以放宽对遗传和寄生虫参数值的限制假设，同时仍然预测性别的维持。然而，一些实证研究表明，有害突变和寄生虫的存在可以降低适应性，比两种因素独立作用时预期的还要严重。我们展示了这些遗传和生态力量之间的相互作用如何能完全改变对生殖模式进化的预测。此外，我们还证明，感染和有害突变之间的协同相互作用可以使性在进化上保持稳定，即使有害突变之间存在拮抗上位性，从而扩大了性进化的条件。
