@article{01f2b9d2e5e14132955e705496e8d0b9,
title = "The mutational meltdown in asexual populations",
abstract = "Loss of fitness due to the accumulation of deleterious mutations appears to be inevitable in small, obligately asexual populations, as these are incapable of reconstituting highly fit genotypes by recombination or back mutation. The cumulative buildup of such mutations is expected to lead to an eventual reduction in population size, and this facilitates the chance accumulation of future mutations. This synergistic interaction between population size reduction and mutation accumulation leads to an extinction process known as the mutational meltdown, and provides a powerful explanation for the rarity of obligate asexuality. We give an overview of the theory of the mutational meltdown, showing how the process depends on the demographic properties of a population, the properties of mutations, and the relationship between fitness and number of mutations incurred.",
author = "M. Lynch and D. Butcher and R. B{\"u}rger and W. Gabriel",
note = "Funding Information: From the Department of Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 (Lynch and Butcher), the Institut fiir Mathematik, Universitat Wien, Vienna, Austria (Burger), and the Department of Physiological Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Limnology, Plon, Germany (Gabriel). This paper was delivered at a symposium titled {"}The Evolution of Sex{"} sponsored by the American Genetic Association at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, on July 10 and 11, 1992. We are very grateful to Brian Charlesworth, Thomas Hansen, David Houle, Alex Kondrashov, Russell Lande, and John Willis for several comments that helped clarify ideas in this paper. The work has been supported by NSF grants BSR 8911038 and BSR 9024977, and PHS grant GM36827 to M.L., a research exchange grant from the Max Kade Foundation to R.B., an NSF Genetic Mechanisms of Evolution training grant fellowship to D.B., and a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to W.G.",
year = "1993",
month = sep,
doi = "10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a111354",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "84",
pages = "339--344",
journal = "Journal of Heredity",
issn = "0022-1503",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
number = "5",
}