Data from: The effect of parasite infection on the recombination rate of the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegyti

Sexual reproduction and meiotic recombination generate new genetic
combinations and may thereby help an individual infected by a parasite to
protect its offspring from being infected. While this idea is often used
to understand the evolutionary forces underlying the maintenance of sex
and recombination, it also suggests that infected individuals should
increase plastically their rate of recombination. We tested the latter
idea with the mosquito Aedes aegypti and asked whether females infected by
the microsporidian Vavraia culicis were more likely to have recombinant
offspring than uninfected females. To measure the rate of recombination
over a chromosome we analysed combinations of microsatellites on
chromosome 3 in infected and uninfected females, in the (uninfected) males
they copulated with and in their offspring. As predicted, the infected
females were more likely to have recombinant offspring than the uninfected
ones. These results show the ability of a female to diversify her
offspring in response to parasitic infection by plastically increasing her
recombination rate.