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Evolutionary biology

Infection elevates diversity

Chromosomal shuffling in parental eggs or sperm can create new characteristics in the next generation. In fruit flies, it seems that mothers with a parasitic infection produce more such recombinant offspring than uninfected mothers.

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Figure 1: Frequency of recombinant offspring altered by infection.

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Correspondence to Aneil F. Agrawal.

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Agrawal, A. Infection elevates diversity. Nature 525, 464–465 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/525464a

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