Somatic mutation favors the evolution of diploidy.

Abstract excerpt

Explanation of diploidy have focused on advantages gained from masking deleterious mutations that are inherited. Recent theory has shown that these explanations are flawed. Indeed, we still lack any satisfactory explanation of diploidy in species that are asexual or that recombine only rarely. Here I consider a possibility first suggested by Efroimson in 1932, by Muller in 1964 and by Crow and Kimura in 1965:...

Topics

• Biological Evolution
• Diploidy
• Genes, Dominant
• Haploidy
• Mathematics
• Models, Genetic
• Mutation
• Reproduction, Asexual