Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Sexual Reproduction in Bdelloid Rotifers

View ORCID ProfileVeronika N. Laine, View ORCID ProfileTimothy Sackton, View ORCID ProfileMatthew Meselson
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.06.239590
Veronika N. Laine
*Department of Animal Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Veronika N. Laine
Timothy Sackton
†Informatics Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Timothy Sackton
Matthew Meselson
‡Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Matthew Meselson
  • For correspondence: msm@wjh.harvard.edu
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

ABSTRACT

Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain why, despite its substantial costs, sexual reproduction is nearly universal in eukaryotes and why its loss generally leads to early extinction. Posing an exception to all such hypotheses are a few groups thought to be entirely asexual that arose millions of years ago. Of these, the most extensively studied are the rotifers of Class Bdelloidea, common freshwater invertebrates of worldwide distribution. Here we present genomic evidence showing that a bdelloid species, Macrotrachella quadricornifera, is facultatively sexual, removing a challenge to hypotheses for the evolutionary benefit of sex and making it likely that sexual reproduction is essential for long-term evolutionary success in all eukaryotes.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Data Availability The sequencing reads (Illumina and Nanopore) and assemblies generated in this study are available from NCBI BioProject XXXXX (accession pending).

  • Difference matrices, phylograms, alignments (tic plots), and raw data are available at https://github.com/tsackton/rotifer-outcrossing

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted April 16, 2021.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Sexual Reproduction in Bdelloid Rotifers
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Sexual Reproduction in Bdelloid Rotifers
Veronika N. Laine, Timothy Sackton, Matthew Meselson
bioRxiv 2020.08.06.239590; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.06.239590
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Sexual Reproduction in Bdelloid Rotifers
Veronika N. Laine, Timothy Sackton, Matthew Meselson
bioRxiv 2020.08.06.239590; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.06.239590

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3590)
  • Biochemistry (7562)
  • Bioengineering (5503)
  • Bioinformatics (20753)
  • Biophysics (10308)
  • Cancer Biology (7964)
  • Cell Biology (11625)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6598)
  • Ecology (10177)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13589)
  • Genetics (9530)
  • Genomics (12830)
  • Immunology (7917)
  • Microbiology (19525)
  • Molecular Biology (7651)
  • Neuroscience (42025)
  • Paleontology (307)
  • Pathology (1254)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2195)
  • Physiology (3261)
  • Plant Biology (7028)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1294)
  • Synthetic Biology (1949)
  • Systems Biology (5422)
  • Zoology (1113)