Introgressive Descent and Hypersexuality Drive The Evolution Of Sexual Parasitism and Morphological Reduction In a Fungal Species Complex
Journal: bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Year: 2023

ABSTRACT Taxonomists consider species as discrete units of biological organization, which are subject to a continuous process of evolutionary change and are connected through their shared ancestry. However, the continuous nature of evolutionary change is difficult to reconcile with the discrete outcome of speciation, especially where species boundaries are permeable. A good example of this inconsistency is the lichen genus Pyrenodesmia , which shows a high morphologic and genetic diversity that