(Mutations do create a minor amount of change.) If asexual reproduction survives at all, conditions must sometimes favor it, even in competition for a niche with sexually reproducing species.

Imagine a gene that promotes sexual reproduction, such as by making it more likely that a plant will reproduce via sexually produced seeds as opposed to some asexual process (e.g., budding ...

Those outlier liaisons gave whiptails robust heterozygosity, which has been preserved by the identical replication—essentially, cloning—that occurs in asexual reproduction. It’s a genetic ...