New paper: Consequences of asexuality in natural populations: insights from stick insects

Featured in Nature Research Highlights: Sex pays off for stick insects despite costs

We empirically tested theoretical predictions of the genomic consequences of asexuality using 5 Timema sex-asex sister pairs that are ecologically similar:

1. signatures of arrested GC-biased gene conversion in asexuals that correspond to the timeframe of asexuality
2. reduced levels of polymorphism consistent with some form of automixis and/or background selection
3. less effective purifying selection in fixed and segregating mutations in asexuals
4. unexpected: asexuals harbor more transcript variants (maybe translational errors? or some way to generate novelty?)