Evolution of Mating Systems ^___

C. elegans has a mating system that can be characterized as androdioecious (hermaphrodites and males). It has been observed that males do not persist very long in laboratory populations. We have found that males are indeed selected against.

The power of using C. elegans as a model system comes from the availability of genetic tools. In this case we used the fog-2 mutation, which effectively turns hermaphrodites into females to test for the stability of this mating system. This mutation is strongly selected against.

There is much more to be done in this system, and we are interested in pursuing it further.