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Well, I haven't been losing sleep over this, but I do think about it on occasion. First of all, don't forget that in forams, which have life cycles of alternating haploid and diploid phases, reproduction by multiple fission isn't always strictly "asexual," but may be preceeded by meiosis. Other things to consider are the allozyme studies on Marginopora vertebralis (there were a couple of papers by Benzies et al. in JFR and Coral Reefs) showed population level differentiation in a group of "larger" foraminiferans also known to be capable of successive asexual reproductive events. Another interesting thing, which may or may not be related, are the results of Maria Holzmann and Jan Pawlowski (Mol. Biol. and Evol.) which showed high rates of sequence divergence in rDNA between individuals in the same species! Obviously, forams have mechanisms for generating genetic diversity, even if they are reproducing "asexually" at times. Cheers, Susan Richardson -- Susan L. Richardson (e-mail: SLR@PEAPLANT.BIOLOGY.YALE.EDU) Dept. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology OML 327/Wagner Lab Yale University P.O. Box 208104 New Haven, CT 06520-8104
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