Phytophthora ramorum NA1 California population

Asexual lineages are considered to have low genetic variation and to be evolutionary dead-ends. However, many asexual species are able to generate genetic and phenotypic variation among individuals, which provides the basis for adaptive evolution. Previous work on the asexual plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum NA1 clonal lineage identifies considerable genetic variation in the form of Structural Variants (SVs).To understand if SVs arose by recombination between isolates or by somatic mutations, we studied the distribution of SVs in the California population and their evolutionary histories.