ABSTRACT

In a recent article, J. Maynard Smith has questioned the validity of the concept, originally due to R. A. Fisher and H. J. Muller, that sexual reproduction is advantageous because it permits favorable mutants that occur in different individuals or lines to be recombined into one. In particular he questions the conclusions that we reached from a quantitative examination of Muller’s model: that recombination is most advantageous when (1) the population is large, (2) the frequency of beneficial mutants is high, and (3) the individual selective advantages of the mutants are small.