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Fundamental and realized feeding niche breadths of sexual and asexual stick-insects

Larose Chloé, View ORCID ProfileDarren J. Parker, View ORCID ProfileSchwander Tanja
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/377176
Larose Chloé
1Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
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  • For correspondence: chloe.larose@unil.ch tanja.schwander@unil.ch
Darren J. Parker
1Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
2Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland
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Schwander Tanja
1Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
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  • For correspondence: chloe.larose@unil.ch tanja.schwander@unil.ch
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ABSTRACT

The factors contributing to the maintenance of sex over asexuality in natural populations remain largely unknown. Ecological divergences between lineages with different reproductive modes could help to maintain reproductive polymorphisms, at least transiently, but there is little empirical information on the consequences of asexuality for the evolution of ecological niches. Here, we investigated how niche breadths evolve following transitions from sexual reproduction to asexuality. We estimated and compared the realized feeding niche breadths of five independently derived asexual Timema stick insect species and their sexual relatives. We found that asexual species had a systematically narrower realized niche than sexual species. To investigate how the narrower realized niches of asexual versus sexual species come about, we quantified the breadth of their fundamental niches but found no systematic differences between reproductive modes. The narrow realized niches found in asexuals are therefore likely a consequence of biotic interactions that constrain realized niche size in asexuals more strongly than in sexuals. Interestingly, the fundamental niche was broader in the oldest asexual species compared to its sexual relative. This broad ecological tolerance may help explain how this species has persisted over more than a million years in absence of sex.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted July 25, 2018.
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Fundamental and realized feeding niche breadths of sexual and asexual stick-insects
Larose Chloé, Darren J. Parker, Schwander Tanja
bioRxiv 377176; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/377176
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Fundamental and realized feeding niche breadths of sexual and asexual stick-insects
Larose Chloé, Darren J. Parker, Schwander Tanja
bioRxiv 377176; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/377176

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