title: The evolution of sex and recombination.
abstract: The evolution and maintenance of sexual reproduction, and the associated process of genetic recombination, are still controversial issues. Two recent books have provided overviews of the ideas and observations in this field. This article reviews some of the major ideas that have been proposed to account for sex and recombination, and comments on the results of attempts at empirical tests. While there is now an impressive body of well-formulated evolutionary models, it has proved hard to discriminate between them, either experimentally or by means of comparative data. It may well be that there is no unitary selective advantage to sex and recombination, but that a variety of forces are involved.
authors.affiliation: Brian Charlesworth is at Dept of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, 1103 E. 57th St, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Charlesworth