One of the most talked about ideas in genetic studies of asexual reproduction has been that of extreme Allelic Sequence Divergence (ASD), often called the “Meselson effect” after Matthew Meselson who is usually credited with this idea. In obligatory asexuals (apomicts), which never have the opportunity to recombine during meiosis, the once homologous chromosome pairs…
Tag: ancient asexuals
Genetic tests of ancient asexuality
I’ve just had a manuscript published at BMC Evolutionary Biology so thought I’d share a synopsis.I’ve been interested in root knot nematodes for a while as they are a powerful system for evolutionary genetics and amazingly successful parasites of plants- especially crop plants. Trudgill and Blok (2001) estimate that they “have host ranges that encompass…