The predominance of sex in eukaryotes is still enigmatic. Sex, a composed process of
meiosis and mixis cycles, confers high costs but the selective advantages remain unclear. In …

Why and how sexual reproduction is maintained in natural populations, the so-called “queen
of problems,” is a key unanswered question in evolutionary biology. Recent efforts to solve …

Background Contamination is a well-known but often neglected problem in molecular
biology. Here, we investigated the prevalence of cross-contamination among 446 samples …

Sex strongly impacts genome evolution via recombination and segregation. In the absence
of these processes, haplotypes within lineages of diploid organisms are predicted to …

Bdelloid rotifers are a class of microscopic invertebrates that have existed for millions of
years apparently without sex or meiosis. They inhabit a variety of temporary and permanent …

Evolution without sex is predicted to impact genomes in numerous ways. Case studies of
individual parthenogenetic animals have reported peculiar genomic features that were …

Recombination is a fundamental process with significant impacts on genome evolution.
Predicted consequences of the loss of recombination include a reduced effectiveness of …

Clonal propagation allows some plant species to achieve massive population sizes quickly
but also reduces the evolutionary independence of different sites in the genome. We …

Animals vary widely in their ability to regenerate, suggesting that regenerative ability has a
rich evolutionary history. However, our understanding of this history remains limited because …

Sex is beneficial in the long term because it can prevent mutational meltdown through
increased effectiveness of selection. This idea is supported by empirical evidence of …