>>13987229There are more net options for the species itself if the individual organisms can reproduce non sexually: ie mutations within a species are effectively halved if it relies on sexual reproduction and it cannot reproduce asexually.
For instance, if e-coli had to reproduce sexually with a mate then the long term ecoli experiment would have been half as likely or worse to evolve the ability to metabolize citrate.
Possibly much less likely since there were multiple mutations (I think 2?) along a particular lineage a few thousands of generations apart that were required for that trait. This implies a sort of positive epsistasis would be necessary where the two neutral mutations from separate organisms would have needed to combine in sexual reproduction to create the new trait.... which of course is less likely since both mutations by themselves offered no fitness advantage.
