The Rotifer's Tale

A discussion of “The Rotifer’s Tale” in Richard Dawkins’ and Yan Wong’s book The Ancestor’s Tale. All pictures are from Google. Erratum: I misspoke. I said “Monogonta” when I should’ve said Monogononta. “Evolution: Contemplating life without sex”: https://www.nature.com/articles/324300a0 “Asexual but Not Clonal: Evolutionary Processes in Automictic Populations”: https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/206/2/993/6064228?login=false “Multiple births by a captive swellshark Cephaloscyllium ventriosum via facultative parthenogenesis”: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310429509_Multiple_births_by_a_captive_swellshark_Cephaloscyllium_ventriosum_via_facultative_parthenogenesis_parthenogenesis_in_cephaloscyllium_ventriosum “Evidence from automixis with inverted meiosis for the maintenance of sex by loss of complementation”: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.13975 The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature 2nd Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-Nature/dp/0060556579/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2KW7FFD5WJ30B&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Fht6GTsPVxUbpgOcclK4YA.SA7plAi2qTJWJntcbjtcYhirEIltH4vFC8oR6xFALDk&dib_tag=se&keywords=The+Red+Queen%3A+Sex+and+the+Evolution+of+Human+Nature+2nd+Edition&qid=1735941358&sprefix=the+red+queen+sex+and+the+evolution+of+human+nature+2nd+edition%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-1 “Experimental Evolution Pt. 1”: https://youtu.be/j5gqQchZWrw “Repeated convergent evolution of parthenogenesis in Acariformes (Acari)”: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.7047 “Arthropod colonization of land – Linking molecules and fossils in oribatid mites (Acari, Oribatida)”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1055790310001697?via%3Dihub “Effective purifying selection in ancient asexual oribatid mites”: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01002-8 “Splendor and misery of adaptation, or the importance of neutral null for understanding evolution”: https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-016-0338-2 “Evolution in the slow lane: molecular rates of evolution in sexual and asexual ostracods (Crustacea: Ostracoda)”: https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article-abstract/79/1/93/2639917 “Fossil Habrotrochid rotifers in Dominican amber”: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226382070_Fossil_Habrotrochid_rotifers_in_Dominican_amber “Evidence for the Evolution of Bdelloid Rotifers Without Sexual Reproduction or Genetic Exchange”: https://www.academia.edu/download/78853532/markwelch00.pdf “A living bdelloid rotifer from 24,000-year-old Arctic permafrost”: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00624-2 “Massive Horizontal Gene Transfer in Bdelloid Rotifers”: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1156407 “Biochemical Diversification through Foreign Gene Expression in Bdelloid Rotifers”: https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1003035 “Allele Sharing and Evidence for Sexuality in a Mitochondrial Clade of Bdelloid Rotifers”: https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/200/2/581/5936151 “Horizontal gene transfer in bdelloid rotifers is ancient, ongoing and more frequent in species from desiccating habitats”: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12915-015-0202-9.pdf “Genetic Exchange among Bdelloid Rotifers Is More Likely Due to Horizontal Gene Transfer Than to Meiotic Sex”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216000816