Who runs fastest in an adaptive landscape: Sexual versus asexual reproduction

Abstract

We compare the speed with which a sexual, respectively an asexual, population is able to respond to a biased selective pressure. Our model focuses on the Weismann hypothesis that the extra variation caused by crossing-over and recombination during sexual reproduction allows a sexual population to adapt faster. We find, however, that the extra variation amongst the progeny produced during sexual reproduction for most model parameters is unable to overcome the effect that parents with a high individual fitness in general must mate with individuals of lower individual fitness resulting in a moderate reproductive fitness for the pair.