those in which anthers and stigmas are not well separated (more selfing) (Takebayashi and Delph, 2000).

Ideas about the evolution of agamospermy and apogamy in plants tend to focus on the genetic consequences of agamospermy and the mechanisms by which it might arise (Mogie, 1992). In flowering plants, for example, agamospermous reproduction resulting from asexual development of gametophytic tissue is almost invariably associated with polyploidy. Whitton (1994) suggests that this correlation arises because the same process, formation of unreduced female gametophytes, contributes both to agamospermous reproduction and to the origin of polyploids. Although these arguments may shed light on the evolutionary correlates of agamospermy, they shed no light on the process by which a genetic variant promoting agamospermy is able to establish itself within populations. Fortunately, it is easy to construct arguments parallel to those for the automatic selection advantage of self-fertilization to show why a similar advantage might accrue to asexual plants in a population of hermaphroditic outcrossers.

In a stable population of hermaphrodites, each outcrosser will replace itself, serving once as a seed parent and once as a pollen parent to the outcrossed progeny of another individual. Suppose a genetic variant that causes complete agamospermy is introduced into this population and that this variant has no effect on the pollen production of individuals carrying it. Then an agamospermous individual will replace itself with agamospermous seed, but it also will serve as pollen parent to the outcrossed progeny of sexual individuals. In short, some of the seed progeny of sexuals will carry the genetic variant causing agamospermy and will be agamospermous themselves, whereas all of the seed progeny of agamosperms also will be agamospermous. Thus, agamospermy has an automatic selection advantage over outcrossing, and it will tend to spread through populations, unless agamosperms have a compensating disadvantage in survival and reproduction relative to outcrossers. I am not aware of studies that investigate the extent of the automatic selection advantage agamosperms might have in natural populations.

Mathematical analyses of models for the evolution and maintenance of sexual reproduction suggest that asexuals can be favored either because they avoid the “cost of males” or because they avoid the “cost of meiosis” (Williams, 1975; Maynard Smith, 1978). The cost of males arises because the number of females in a population more often limits its rate of population growth than the number of males, a consequence of Bateman's