Evidence for DNA loss as a determinant of genome size

Eukaryotic genome sizes range over five orders of magnitude. This variation cannot be explained by differences in organismic complexity (the C value p aradox). To test the hypothesis that some variation in genome size can be a ttributed to differences in the patterns of insertion and deletion (indel) mutations among organisms, this study examines the indel spectrum in Laupal a crickets, which have a genome size 11 times larger than that of Drosophil a. Consistent with the hypothesis. DNA Loss is more than 40 times slower in Laupala than in Drosophila.