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Author Topic:   Seagrass 'tens of thousands of years old'.
sfs
Member (Idle past 2559 days)
Posts: 464
From: Cambridge, MA USA
Joined: 08-27-2003


Message 9 of 15 (650958)
02-03-2012 3:36 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Dr Adequate
02-03-2012 2:06 PM


quote:
Well, if she's talking about Muller's Ratchet, then that's not a reason why asexual organisms should go extinct, because they don't.
It certainly is a reason why asexual organisms might go extinct. Asexual organisms with small populations, that is. Which is why they write in the paper, "Reaching such an old age has been suggested to have at least two major evolutionary implications for a clonal lineage. One is the lack or limited accumulation of deleterious mutations that would otherwise eventually lead to extinction: the so called Muller's ratchet, which is predicted under certain population parameters. Our results suggest that this accumulation might be limited or hampered due to large population size, as well as by the persistent dominance of the original genotype under a pure regime of clonal growth demonstrated by the present model (Fig. 4)."
quote:
But if she's talking about the handicap that asexual multicellular organisms suffer in the Red Queen's Race, then she's not talking about Muller's Ratchet. It seemed to me that she's conflating the two and so being wrong about both.
Where did she conflate them? The authors do list both Muller's ratchet and inability to adapt to parasites as dangers that clonal organisms need to avoid (in the paper's introduction), but I see no suggestion that they have them confused.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Dr Adequate, posted 02-03-2012 2:06 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Dr Adequate, posted 02-03-2012 8:56 PM sfs has replied

  
sfs
Member (Idle past 2559 days)
Posts: 464
From: Cambridge, MA USA
Joined: 08-27-2003


Message 12 of 15 (651025)
02-03-2012 9:45 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Dr Adequate
02-03-2012 8:56 PM


quote:
Well any small enough population will be wiped out by genetic drift. Yes, if they're asexual, M.R. will be part of that.
Yes, but "small enough" is probably a lot smaller for sexual (or at least recombining) populations than for asexual ones. So if you're studying the persistence of small clonal populations, it's perfectly reasonable to ask how Muller's Ratchet is being avoided.
quote:
I was just talking about the quotes that have been quoted from the article, I haven't read the paper. The quotes are in fact confused, which is why they confused Pressie.
Yes, I know, but I still don't see what's confused about the quotations. The only quotation that looks peculiar to me is, ""The age of clonal organisms should therefore be limited as well," because I can't tell what is meant by age or organism in it, since it presented without any context.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Dr Adequate, posted 02-03-2012 8:56 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

Replies to this message:
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