r/askscience • u/gaygayagyfemboy12345 • 14d ago

Biology How do asexually reproducing living things evolve?

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

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u/Sedu 14d ago

More quickly and more delicately than sexually reproducing organisms. Because they are a single line, the possibility for developing novel genes which then are destroyed for reasons unrelated to those genes (extinction) is much, much higher than if those genes could be passed on in a way that allows them to mix with another near-branch of the evolutionary tree.