ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
Sex as a strategy against rapidly evolving parasites.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- Disentangling the role of parasite infectivity and density from host susceptibility in infection development and parasite proliferation.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Parasite-mediated inbreeding depression in wild red deer.Heredity · 2025Article
- Intestinal parasites in rodents from five different Himas in Lebanon.Helminthologia · 2025Article
- Ectopical expression of bacterial collagen-like protein supports its role as adhesin in host-parasite coevolution.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Parasite diversity at isolated, disturbed hydrothermal vents.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The timings of host diapause and epidemic progression mediate host genetic diversity and future epidemic size inProceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Genetic slippage after sex maintains diversity for parasite resistance in a natural host population.Science advances · 2022Article
- Effect of urbanization on zoonotic gastrointestinal parasite prevalence in endemic toque macaque (International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2022Article
- Balancing Selection for Pathogen Resistance Reveals an Intercontinental Signature of Red Queen Coevolution.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Infection phenotypes of a coevolving parasite are highly diverse, structured, and specific.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2021Article
- Density, parasitism, and sexual reproduction are strongly correlated in lakeEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- Why isn't sex optional? Stem-cell competition, loss of regenerative capacity, and cancer in metazoan evolution.Communicative & integrative biology · 2020Review
- Transmissible cancer and the evolution of sex.PLoS biology · 2019Article
- Our (Mother's) Mitochondria and Our Mind.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2018Review
- Sex as a strategy against rapidly evolving parasites.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Why is sex ubiquitous when asexual reproduction is much less costly? Sex disrupts coadapted gene complexes; it also causes costs associated with mate finding and the production of males who do not themselves bear offspring. Theory predicts parasites select for host sex, because genetically variable offspring can escape infection from parasites adapted to infect the previous generations. We examine this using a facultative sexual crustacean, Daphnia magna, and its sterilizing bacterial parasite, Pasteuria ramosa We obtained sexually and asexually produced offspring from wild-caught hosts and exposed them to contemporary parasites or parasites isolated from the same population one year later. We found rapid parasite adaptation to replicate within asexual but not sexual offspring. Moreover, sexually produced offspring were twice as resistant to infection as asexuals when exposed to parasites that had coevolved alongside their parents (i.e. the year two parasite). This fulfils the requirement that the benefits of sex must be both large and rapid for sex to be favoured by selection.
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