Alan M. Vincent has written an Evolution Digest about our recent paper on the evolution of outcrossing versus selfing in the volvocine algae (“Going solo: Self‐fertilization in haploid algae may not lead to evolutionary decline“):

Many traits are considered evolutionary dead‐ends when comparing the short‐term advantage for an individual against long‐term detrimental effects on lineage persistence. It is fairly rare, however, for these claims to be tested. For example, it is assumed that specialization increases rates of extinction. Day et al. (2016) used similar phylogenetic methods to Hanschen et al. (2017) to test whether specialization led to increased extinction rates in ten phylogenies of various plants, insects, flatworms and birds. They found that specialization was less detrimental than expected: only two phylogenies showed significant reduction in diversification and higher “tippiness.” Similarly, Hanschen et al. (2017) show that selfing did not seem to be a dead‐end trait (corroborated by the two reversals from selfing to outcrossing).