Meanings of colpodean ciliates in English

The challenge that colpodean ciliates pose is therefore not to evolutionary theory, but to our ability to induce microbial eukaryotic sex in the laboratory.

Here we show using de novo genome sequencing, that colpodean ciliates have the meiotic genes required for sex and these genes are under functional constraint.

If macro-organismic theories of evolution also broadly apply to microbial eukaryotes, though, then most or all of the colpodean ciliates should merely be secretively sexual.

The putatively asexual Colpodean ciliates potentially pose a problem to macro-organismic theories of evolution.