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RECENT DIVERGENCE. "Studies of species that have recently evolved separate sexes are ideal for testing the idea that hermaphrodites are selected to ‘compromise’ between male and female functions, an important test case for the existence of trade-offs between different functions." https://lnkd.in/exrSaeb View in LinkedIn

MUTANT SWARMS. "Viral quasispecies are currently defined as collections of closely related viral genomes subjected to a continuous process of genetic variation, competition among the variants generated, and selection of the most fit distributions in a given environment." https://lnkd.in/dC3CR5F View in LinkedIn

LOSS OF RECOMBINATION. "Understanding the evolution of sex chromosomes is impossible without first understanding the evolution of separate sexes, because the genetic changes involved in the latter lead with high probability to the chromosomes involved losing recombination, and it is loss of recombination that leads to the special properties of sex chromosomes." https://lnkd.in/exrSaeb View in LinkedIn

AS IF TAXONOMY and the description of viruses were not challenging enough, viral quasispecies completely mock the tidy idea of species. Mutant viral swarms flicker in an ever-changing broth of variant strains, ultimately defying our ability to characterize globally these chamelion geniuses of kaleidoscope adaptation. https://lnkd.in/gDaeFeM View in LinkedIn

STRANGE PHENOMENA. "There is wide interest in understanding sex chromosome evolution, which involves strange phenomena such as selection for suppression of genetic recombination (which is widespread throughout the genomes of most organisms, other than in parts of the sex chromosomes), and the resulting ‘genetic degeneration’ involving loss of function, or complete loss, of many genes on the non-recombining chromosome; this chromosome is the Y in XY systems, and the W in ZW systems such as that of birds and Lepidoptera, and a few plants." https://lnkd.in/exrSaeb View in LinkedIn

BACTERIOPHAGES AND VIRUSES. “And as the most numerous biological entities on the planet, with great—if far from fully understood—relevance for global nutrient cycling and gene dispersal, phages and other viruses represent an important and largely unexplored frontier in ecology.” https://lnkd.in/gPxMKj9 View in LinkedIn

REPEATED EVENTS IN PLANTS. "It is now well established that plants have an important place in studies of sex chromosome evolution because of the repeated independent evolution of separate sexes and sex chromosomes." https://lnkd.in/exrSaeb View in LinkedIn

VERY NEW FINDING. “Bacteriophages, or viruses that infect bacteria, have been known to science for less than a hundred years and remain at the periphery of our perception of life.” https://lnkd.in/gPxMKj9 View in LinkedIn

CRITICAL TRANSITION. "The evolution from hermaphroditism to dioecy (separate sexes) is considered one of the most important evolutionary transitions in the reproductive history of angiosperms. Although relatively rare (approx. 6 % of species), dioecy is a widespread reproductive system in angiosperms (reported in approx. 38 % of families." https://lnkd.in/guzeMTD View in LinkedIn

INTERMEDIATE STEP. "Although a direct transition has sometimes been suggested, the transition probably involved intermediate steps in most cases, as it seems unlikely that male and female sterility mutations arise simultaneously in hermaphroditic species." https://lnkd.in/guzeMTD View in LinkedIn