sex is always well worth its two-fold cost性总是值得它的双重成本.pdfVIP

Sex Is Always Well Worth Its Two-Fold Cost Alexander Feigel*, Avraham Englander, Assaf Engel Soreq NRC, Yavne, Israel Abstract Sex is considered as an evolutionary paradox, since its positive contribution to Darwinian fitness remains unverified for some species. Defenses against unpredictable threats (parasites, fluctuating environment and deleterious mutations) are indeed significantly improved by wider genetic variability and by positive epistasis gained by sexual reproduction. The corresponding evolutionary advantages, however, do not overcome universally the barrier of the two-fold cost for sharing half of one’s offspring genome with another member of the population. Here we show that sexual reproduction emerges and is maintained even when its Darwinian fitness is twice as low as the fitness of asexuals. We also show that more than two sexes (inheritance of genetic material from three or even more parents) are always evolutionary unstable. Our approach generalizes the evolutionary game theory to analyze species whose members are able to sense the sexual state of their conspecifics and to adapt their own sex consequently, either by switching or by taxis towards the highest concentration of the complementary sex. The widespread emergence and maintenance of sex follows therefore from its co-evolution with the even more widespread environmental sensing abilities. Citation: Feigel A, Englander A, Engel A (2009) Sex Is Always Well Worth Its Two-Fold Cost. PLoS ONE 4(7): e6012. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006012 Editor: Robert Belshaw, University of Oxford, United Kingdom Received September 3, 2008; Accepted May 12, 2009; Published July 7, 2009 Copyright: 2009 Feigel et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, a