Evolutionary traction: the cost of adaptation and the evolution of sex

The advantage of sexual reproduction remains a puzzle for evolutionary biologists. Everything else being equal, asexual populations are expected to have twice the number of offspring produced by similar sexual populations. Yet, asexual species are uncommon among higher eukaryotes. In models assuming small populations, high mutation rates, or frequent environmental changes, sexual reproduction seems to have at least a two-fold advantage over asexuality. But the advantage of sex for large populations, low mutation rates, and rare or mild environmental changes remains a conundrum. Here we show that without recombination, rare advantageous mutations can result in increased accumulation of deleterious mutations ('evolutionary traction'), which explains the long-term advantage of sex under a wide parameter range.