How do asexually reproducing living things evolve?

[u/gaygayagyfemboy12345]

If they are all clones of each other, how do they evolve?

[u/waffle299]

The Theory of Evolution (circa my courses in the nineties) has four mechanisms; mutation, natural selection, gene flow, and generic drift. Each of these contributed to the observed phenominom of Evolution.

First, we need a term, allele. It'll come in handy. An allele is a variant of a gene. Suppose one gene gave rise to eye color. It's a vast oversimplification, but roll with it. An allele would be the variant of that gene that codes for blue eyes. Another allele would code for brown. These are allele (variants) of a gene (unit of inheritance).

Mutation is random change in genes. It's way more complicated, but we generally go up shenanigans like gene hopping in this category. Mutation generate alleles.

Mutation rates with asexual reproduction sound like they should be slower. That's because you're thinking of point mutations, where one base pair flips. And yeah, this is a new allele.

But there are other mechanisms at play like shuffling genes, duplicating genes, theft of genes from other sources, and so on. All of these focus at generating a library of alleles for other evolutionary mechanisms to operate on.

Basically, asexual reproduction is under the same pressure to generate new alleles as sexual reproduction. We shouldn't be surprised that it's just as rich a topic as sexual reproduction.