Factors ranging from ecological opportunity to genome composition might explain why only some lineages form adaptive radiations. While being rare, particular systems can provide natural experiments within an identical ecological setting where the factors promoting increased species numbers and phenotypic divergence in two closely related lineages is notably different. We investigated one such natural experiment using two de novo assembled and 40 re-sequenced genomes and asked why two closely related Neotropical cichlid fish lineages, the...

Transposable elements (TEs) are selfish genomic parasites whose ability to spread autonomously is facilitated by sexual reproduction in their hosts. If hosts become obligately asexual, TE frequencies and dynamics are predicted to change dramatically, but the long-term outcome is unclear. Here, we test current theory using whole-genome sequence data from eight species of bdelloid rotifers, a class of invertebrates in which males are thus far unknown. Contrary to expectations, we find a variety of active...