The evolutionary advantage of fitness-dependent recombination in diploids: a deterministic mutation–selection–balance model

Recombination’s omnipresence in nature is one of the most intriguing problems in evolutionary biology. The question of why recombination exhibits certain general features is no less interesting than that of why it exists at all. One such feature is recombination’s fitness dependence (FD). The so far developed population-genetics models have focused on the evolution of FD recombination mainly in haploids, although the empirical evidence for this phenomenon comes mostly from diploids. Using numerical analysis of modifier models for infinite panmictic populations, we show here that FD recombination can be evolutionarily advantageous in diploids subjected to purifying selection. We ascribe this advantage to the differential rate of disruption of lower- vs higher-fitness genotypes, which can be manifested in selected systems with at least three loci. We also show that if the modifier is linked to such selected system, it can additionally benefit from modifying this linkage in a fitness-depen...