The Tree of Sex consortium: A global initiative for studying the evolution of reproduction in eukaryotes

Reproduction is a fundamental aspect of life that affects all levels of biology, from genomes and development to population dynamics and diversification. The first Tree of Sex database synthesized a vast diversity of reproductive strategies and their intriguing distribution throughout eukaryotes. A decade on, we are reviving this initiative and greatly expanding its scope to provide the most comprehensive integration of knowledge on eukaryotic reproduction to date. In this perspective, we first identify important gaps in our current knowledge of reproductive strategies across eukaryotes. We then highlight a selection of questions that will benefit most from this new Tree of Sex project, including those related to the evolution of sex, modes of sex determination, sex chromosomes, and the consequences of various reproductive strategies. Finally, we outline our vision for the new Tree of Sex database and the consortium that will create it (treeofsex.org). The new database will cover all Eukaryota and include a wide selection of biological traits. It will also incorporate genomic data types that were scarce or non-existent at the time of the first Tree of Sex initiative. The new database will be publicly accessible, stable, and self-sustaining, thus greatly improving the accessibility of reproductive knowledge to researchers across disciplines for years to come. Lastly, the consortium will persist after the database is created to serve as a collaborative framework for research, prioritizing ethical standards in the collection, use, and sharing of reproductive data. The new Tree of Sex consortium is open, and we encourage all who are interested in this topic to join us.

C.G.S.C. and K.S.J. were supported by the Wellcome Trust grant number 220540. L.K. is supported by the Czech Science Foundation (23-07665S). A.R.H. is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-112557GB-I00 funded by AEI/10.13039/501100011033), the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca, AGAUR (2021SGR00122) and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). P.J. is supported by a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) fellowship (LT0033/2022-L). C.E.M.G. is supported by a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellowship (DBI 2208973). D.L.J. is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation project grant TMAG-3_209309. A.B. is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG grant IDs 492407022 and 497674620 / 1. C.B. could attend the Tree of Sex workshops thanks to an ASAB (Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour) grant. M.A.W. is supported by the NIGMS of the National Institutes of Health award R35GM124827 to M.A.W. S.G. is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (CNS2023-143604 funded by AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca, AGAUR (2021SGR00315). N.V. is supported in part by grant IOS 2127995 from the USA National Science Foundation.

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