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NUMERICAL ADVANTAGE. “Selfing can evolve in response to an extremely diverse array of selective agents, but its intrinsic 3 : 2 transmission advantage is ever present (up to 50%). This specific advantage arises because a selfing individual, in a stable population, transmits a total of three copies of alleles: two through self-fertilized seeds, and a single copy as an outcrossed pollen parent.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12182/full View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this dalliance into the world of biological dark matter. Next weekend we will dip into what we do know about these tiny unknown creatures, and see how important they have been in our evolution and in planetary affairs. But to say that we are still in the Biological Dark Ages is an understatement. We know so little about the real biodiversity of our planet, both big and small. View in LinkedIn

ARTHROPOD VIRAL RESERVOIR. "We similarly documented a remarkable diversity of genome structures in arthropod viruses, including a putative circular form, that sheds new light on the evolution of genome organization. Hence, arthropods are a major reservoir of viral genetic diversity and have likely been central to viral evolution." https://lnkd.in/dhUCtkZ View in LinkedIn

VIRAL POOL. "The huge diversity of negative-sense RNA viruses in insects, spiders and other arthropods suggests that these animals could be central to virus origin and evolution." https://lnkd.in/dYBnxsT View in LinkedIn

OBSCURE RNA VIRUSES. "Most of these analyses have focused on viruses with genomes that are made of DNA or positive-sense RNA, and there have been fewer studies of viruses with genomes made of negative-sense RNA. Therefore, the evolutionary history of negative-sense RNA viruses, which are responsible for influenza, measles, Ebola and many other diseases in animals and plants, remains obscure." https://lnkd.in/dYBnxsT View in LinkedIn

SELF-INCOMPATIBILITY. “At one end of the spectrum of complexity, self-incompatibility systems involve closely co-evolving pistil- and pollen-expressed genes. The derivation of selfing in ancestrally self-incompatible lineages causes the loss of tightly co-evolved allelic diversity in the genes embedded at the S-locus.” https://lnkd.in/dj9hK7n View in LinkedIn

REASSEMBLING OUTCROSSING. “The genetic basis and complexity of the outcrossing mechanism are important because they control directly the likelihood that an outcrossing phenotype can be reassembled in a selfing population.” https://lnkd.in/dj9hK7n View in LinkedIn

HYPOTHETICAL. “In the absence of pollinators, reversals would be impossible, with the sole exception of a simultaneous shift to an abiotic mode of cross-pollination.” https://lnkd.in/dj9hK7n View in LinkedIn

A SOURCE OF GENETIC VARIATION. “Sexual reproduction has been observed in nearly all branches of the eukaryotic tree of life. It provides an important mechanism to establish genetic variation by combining genetic information of two parental lineages.” https://lnkd.in/eC8eb-V View in LinkedIn

IMPACT OF POLLINATORS. “Reversals to outcrossing are also unlikely when selfing evolves in pollinator-limited environments, because pollination vectors are necessary to produce outcrossed seed.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12182/full View in LinkedIn