title: Habitat heterogeneity favors asexual reproduction in natural populations of grassthrips.
abstract: Explaining the overwhelming success of sex among eukaryotes is difficult given the obvious costs of sex relative to asexuality. Different studies have shown that sex can provide benefits in spatially heterogeneous environments under specific conditions, but whether spatial heterogeneity commonly contributes to the maintenance of sex in natural populations remains unknown. We experimentally manipulated habitat heterogeneity for sexual and asexual thrips lineages in natural populations and under seminatural mesocosm conditions by varying the number of hostplants available to these herbivorous insects. Asexual lineages rapidly replaced the sexual ones, independently of the level of habitat heterogeneity in mesocosms. In natural populations, the success of sexual thrips decreased with increasing habitat heterogeneity, with sexual thrips apparently only persisting in certain types of hostplant communities. Our results illustrate how genetic diversity-based mechanisms can favor asexuality instead of sex when sexual lineages co-occur with genetically variable asexual lineages.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland. Guillaume.Lavanchy@unil.ch.
authors.forename: Guillaume
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lavanchy
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Strehler
authors.affiliation: Graduate School-Doctoral program in Biomedical Sciences, National University of Trujillo, Trujillo, Peru.
authors.forename: Maria Noemi
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Llanos Roman
authors.affiliation: Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse, Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Malie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lessard-Therrien
authors.affiliation: Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse, Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Jean-Yves
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Humbert
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Zoé
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Dumas
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Kirsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jalvingh
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Karim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ghali
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Amaranta
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fontcuberta García-Cuenca
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Bart
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zijlstra
authors.affiliation: Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse, Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Raphaël
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Arlettaz
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Tanja
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schwander
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017753:Ecosystem; D014644:Genetic Variation; D012100:Reproduction, Asexual; D061149:Thysanoptera / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Asexuality; Tangled Bank; Thysanoptera; evolution of sex; parthenogenesis