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OPTIONAL VIRGIN BIRTHS. "Facultatively parthenogenetic species of animals do exist and such organisms could provide tests of hypotheses related to constraints on asexual reproduction." https://lnkd.in/gGTTSzx View in LinkedIn

"THE EVOLUTIONARY ORIGIN of sex can differ from the evolutionary maintenance of sex and different factors may help maintain sex than lead to its evolution. The evolutionary return to asexual reproduction from a sexual ancestor requires a number of simultaneous changes: eggs may not mature until stimulated by mating, eggs may not develop without stimulation by sperm, and diploidy must be restored unless meiosis is suppressed." https://lnkd.in/gGTTSzx View in LinkedIn

DIPLOID EGGS. "Only females that have a high level of heterozygosity are capable of parthenogenetic reproduction and there is a strong familial influence on the ability to reproduce parthenogenetically. Although the mechanism by which genetic variation facilitates asexual reproduction is unknown, we suggest that heterosis may facilitate the switch from producing haploid meiotic eggs to diploid, essentially mitotic, eggs." https://lnkd.in/gGTTSzx View in LinkedIn

COCKROACH CLONES. "We investigate the role of genetic factors in limiting asexual reproduction in Nauphoeta cinerea, an African cockroach with facultative parthenogenesis that nearly always reproduces sexually. We show that when N. cinerea females do reproduce asexually, offspring are genetically identical to their mothers. However, asexual reproduction is limited to a nonrandom subset of the genotypes in the population." https://lnkd.in/gGTTSzx View in LinkedIn

FACULTATIVE PARTHENOGENESIS. "Asexual reproduction could offer up to a two-fold fitness advantage over sexual reproduction, yet higher organisms usually reproduce sexually. Even in facultatively parthenogenetic species, where both sexual and asexual reproduction is sometimes possible, asexual reproduction is rare. Thus, the debate over the evolution of sex has focused on ecological and mutation-elimination advantages of sex." https://lnkd.in/gGTTSzx View in LinkedIn

PLAN B. "Facultative parthenogenesis enables females to produce offspring by themselves, preventing reproductive failure when they do not find a mate before dying. Therefore, facultative parthenogenesis is likely to be advantageous in certain situations, even though it may be ultimately inferior to sexual reproduction in terms of long-term fitness." https://lnkd.in/gPAUsAH View in LinkedIn

SINGLE PARENTS. "Facultative parthenogenesis, or condition-dependent alternation of sexual and asexual reproduction, is widespread in animals. Parthenogenesis enables unmated females to reproduce and thus has a great adaptive significance, especially under low pairing efficiency. In the termite Reticulitermes speratus Kolbe, females that fail to pair with males found colonies cooperatively with partner females and reproduce parthenogenetically." https://lnkd.in/gPAUsAH View in LinkedIn

"FACULTATIVE PARTHENOGENESIS, switching between sexual and clonal reproduction, although quite common in invertebrates, e.g. Daphnia and aphids, seems to be even rarer in vertebrates. However, isolated cases of parthenogenetic development have been reported in all vertebrate groups. Facultative parthenogenesis in vertebrates has only been found in captive animals but might simply have been overlooked in natural populations." https://lnkd.in/geEs5eg View in LinkedIn

ROOT FAMILY CHATTER. "Kin recognition by the roots of Cycas edentata was recently demonstrated. Our extensive literature search revealed this to be the first report of kin recognition in any spermatophyte other than angiosperms. Based on this new validation that the phenomenon occurs among phylogenetically diverse taxa, we conclude that kin recognition by roots may be an ancient phenomenon." https://lnkd.in/gYpA3RF View in LinkedIn

VARIANT DEVELOPMENT. "Parthenogenesis occurs in a wide range of animal taxa and is produced by a variety of different underlying mechanisms. Parthenogenesis was not the ancestral state in the taxa where it occurs; at some point in their evolutionary histories, genetic variants must have arisen that (1) allowed impaternate development of embryos, and (2) were favored by existing ecological or demographic factors." http://www.g3journal.org/content/3/4/757.full View in LinkedIn