ON THE COEXISTENCE AND COEVOLUTION OF ASEXUAL AND SEXUAL COMPETITORS

Abstract

The coexistence and coevolution of sexual and asexual species under resource competition are explored with three models: a nongenetic ecological model, a model including single locus genetics, and a quantitative-genetic model. The basic assumption underlying all three models is that genetic differences are translated into ecological differences. Hence if sexual species are genetically more variable, they will be ecologically more variable. Under classical competition theory, this increased ecological variability can, in many cases, be an advantage to individual sexual genotypes and to the sexual species as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to determine the conditions when this advantage will outway three disadvantages of sexuality: the costs of males, of segregation, and of the additive component of recombination. All three models reach similar conclusions. Although asexuality confers an advantage, it is much less than a two-fold advantage because minor increases in the overall species niche width of the sexual species will offset the reproductive advantage of the asexual species. This occurs for two reasons. First, an increase in species niche width increases the resource base of the sexual species. Second, to the extent that the increase in niche width is due to increased differences between individuals, a reduction in intraspecific competition will result. This is not to imply that the sexual species will always win. The prime conditions that enable sexual species to stably coexist with or even supplant an asexual sister species are: Spatial or temporal heterogeneities are not required in this model. This is an important difference between this model and other models for sexual advantage. Instead, depletion of resources used by common genotypes creates a rare-genotype advantage. The sexual species, with its great diversity of genotypes, is better equipped to capture this advantage. Although the mechanisms of our model are framed in terms of competition for shared resources, the important factor is that it generates frequency-dependent fitnesses. Other frequency-dependent ecological mechanisms, such as shared predators with functional responses, or shared genotypically-specific parasites, would work as well.