Life-cycle plasticity enables conditional asexual reproduction in a kelp.

In the kelp Laminaria pallida, asexual reproduction is linked to endoreduplication and reduced fitness, and it is retained but rarely expressed in two natural populations.

• Why it matters: The study addresses how organisms coordinate life-stage identity with switching between sexual and asexual reproduction, a gap that limits understanding of reproductive strategy tradeoffs.
• What they did: The authors combined gene expression analyses, developmental experiments, and natural population-level approaches to map transcriptional signatures across sexual versus asexual developmental transitions.
• The result: They found that potential mating partners reduce asexual development, implying reproductive mode is adjusted to reproductive opportunities and enabling conditional persistence when sex is constrained.

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