Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

From the viewpoint of long-term population dynamics, asexual reproduction is only a certain form of vegetative growth. Instead of organisms increasing their body size and increasing the number of their sex organs, as, for example, trees do, through vegetative reproduction, they produce separate, independently viable, genetically identical copies of themselves. A population of genetically identical organisms is called a genet and the individuals forming a certain genet are called ramets. Under certain conditions, the independence of ramets is advantageous, for example in parasites it allows the genets of the parasite to occupy and utilize the entire body of the host organism without there existing any mechanical interconnection between the individual ramets that would otherwise disturb the integrity of the host organism.