Séminaire d'Ecologie et d'Evolution : conférence d'Aneil Agrawal : 'Testing theory for the evolution of sex : it's more fun in practice'

A l'occasion du séminaire d'écologie et d'évolution au CNRS de Montpellier, Aneil Agrawal du Département d'Ecologie et d'Evolution Biologie à l'Université de Toronto,  nous parle du "test de la théorie de l'évolution de sexe : il est plus amusant en pratique".

The evolutionary maintenance of sex is one of the classic problems in evolutionary biology. For decades, theoreticians have worked on this problem but there have been few direct experimental tests of their ideas. I will discuss our recent work using experimental evolution in a species of facultatively sexual rotifers to test two of these theories. First, I will discuss the idea that environmental heterogeneity in selection can help favour sex. Second, I will discuss the oldest explanation for sex in which it is argued that sex is favoured because it facilitates adaptation. These theories are discussed in the context of the two general population genetic mechanisms acting on sex, so-called "long-" and "short-term" effects. In our most recent experiments, we not only find that sex can be favoured during adaptation but we have evidence that this occurs through a "long-term" advantage, as predicted by theory, despite a considerable "short-term" disadvantage.