An international research team has shown that parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction, negatively affects the genome evolution of the animals that practise it. In this type of reproduction, the offspring are produced from a single unfertilized egg. The study was led by Professor Dr Tanja Schwander and Professor Dr Marc Robinson-Rechavi at the University of Lausanne in cooperation with partners at the University of Edinburgh and Dr Jens Bast at the University of Cologne.