| Literature DB >> 19004792 |
Andrew R Weeks1, Ary A Hoffmann.
Abstract
Asexual organisms can be genetically variable and evolve through time, yet it is not known how genetic diversity is maintained in populations. In sexual organisms, negative frequency-dependent selection plays a role in maintaining diversity at some loci, but in asexual organisms, this mechanism could provide a general explanation for persistent genetic diversity because it acts on the whole genome and not just on some polymorphisms within a genome. Using field manipulations, we show that negative frequency-dependent selection maintains clonal diversity in an asexual mite species, and we link predicted equilibrium clonal frequencies to average frequencies in space and time. Intense frequency-dependent selection is likely to be a general mechanism for persistent genetic diversity in asexual organisms.Mesh：
Year: 2008 PMID： 19004792 PMCID： PMC2582578 DOI： 10.1073/pnas.0806039105
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A ISSN： 0027-8424 Impact factor: 11.205