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Geographical Parthenogenesis: Opportunities for Asexuality

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Lost Sex

Abstract

Asexual organisms often occupy larger and more northern distribution areas than their sexual relatives. These phenomena, summarized under the term “geographical parthenogenesis”, seem to confirm a short term advantage of asexual reproduction. Geographical parthenogenesis may be explained by better colonizing abilities of asexual organisms, or by a swamping of sexual populations because of introgression of asexuality. Asexual organisms may perform better in diverse and narrow ecological niches, or may benefit in colder climates from a lower pressure of parasites and predators. The distributional success of asexuals has been also referred to indirect advantages of hybridity and/or polyploidy. Sexual hybrids or polyploids, however, do not show patterns of geographical parthenogenesis. Here, I present a novel model for those asexual organisms that have originated from hybridization. Climatic changes may have triggered interspecific hybridization, which increases frequencies of new origins of asexuality, but decreases fitness of sexual progenitor species. Asexuality is further advantageous for re-colonization of devastated areas. Therefore, frequencies of asexual populations increase relative to those of related sexuals. Glaciations during the Pleistocene may have provided great opportunities for the evolution of asexual organisms, while the Tertiary might have been a period of predominant sexuality. The geologically rather recent wave of asexuality helps to explain that most extant asexual animals and plants are evolutionarily young and appear scattered on the tips of phylogenetic trees.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Isa Schön, Peter Van Dijk and one anonymous referee for valuable comments on the manuscript. This work was funded by the Austrian Research Foundation (FWF), P 19006-B03.

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  1. Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Vienna, Rennweg 14, A-1030, Vienna, Austria

    Elvira Hörandl

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  1. Elvira Hörandl
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Correspondence to Elvira Hörandl .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Sciences, Royal Belgian Institute of, Vautierstraat 29, Bruxelles, 1000, Belgium

    Isa Schön

  2. Sciences Department of Freshwater, Royal Belgian Inst. of Natural, Vautierstraat 29, Bruxelles, 1000, Belgium

    Koen Martens

  3. Keygene N.V., Agro Business Park 90, Wageningen, 6708 PW, Netherlands

    Peter Dijk

Glossary

Agamospecies:

apomictic lineages with distinct morphological, ecological and geographical features, which have been classified formally as species.

Apomeiotic:

the development of the embryo sac without meiosis in flowering plants

GlossarySeeAlso(see also Chapter 3)
Aposporous:

a form of apomitic reproduction in flowering plants, whereby the embryo sac develops out of a somatic cell

GlossarySeeAlso(see also Chapter 3)
Homoploid hybrids:

hybrids with the same ploidy level as the parents; usually applied to diploid hybrids, which have originated from diploid parental species.

Pseudogamy:

sperm-dependent or pollen-dependent asexual reproduction.

GlossarySeeAlso(see also Chapter 3)
Uniparental reproduction:

reproduction via only one parental individual (including unisexual reproduction, apomixis, automixis, and autogamy of hermaphroditic organisms; vegetative propagation is not included here; ).

GlossarySeeAlso(see also Chapter 3)

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Hörandl, E. (2009). Geographical Parthenogenesis: Opportunities for Asexuality. In: Schön, I., Martens, K., Dijk, P. (eds) Lost Sex. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2770-2_8

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