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SELECTED AGAINST? “Given the widespread occurrence, yet apparently short-lived persistence, of selfing as a strategy, an oft-invoked hypothesis has been that species selection discourages this mating system.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12182/full View in LinkedIn

ANGIOSPERM REPRODUCTION. “Selfing, however, is not the predominant mode of reproduction in angiosperms, and multiple mechanisms may potentially effect intermediate levels of self-fertlization.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12182/full View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION OF PLANT SELFING. “Over the last 50 yr, an impressive body of theoretical and experimental work has demonstrated that the evolution of selfing is driven by multifarious agents of selection, potentially dominated by its transmission advantage and ability to provide reproductive assurance.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12182/full View in LinkedIn

VIRAL DARK MATTER. "Viruses are the most numerous, and arguably the most diverse, branch of life. They have been described as the ‘dark matter’ of biology because they can be very hard to detect, and the large-scale sequencing of genetic material from the environment is only now showing us how numerous and diverse they really are." https://lnkd.in/dYBnxsT View in LinkedIn

FLAWED DATA. “Sources of data that apparently contradict strongly asymmetric mating system transitions often rely on statistical phylogenetic tests plagued by profound flaws.” 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

OVER 100 NEW VIRUSES FOUND. "Zhang and co-workers found that the 112 new viruses were spread across the major lineages of the negative-sense RNA viruses. These discoveries fill some major gaps in our knowledge, and allow the tree of viral relationships to be updated. For example, this latest work confirms that the viruses of the Arenaviridae genus—which generally infect rodents—belong to the Bunyaviridae family along with two previously unclassified genera of viruses that infect plants." A drop in the bucket. https://lnkd.in/dYBnxsT View in LinkedIn