I am reading John H. Gillespie's Population Genetics A Concise Guide Section 4.3 Inbreeding. I do not understand these two paragraphs quoted below concerning selfing and outcrossing.
The first paragraph states that an outcrosser individual leaves behind on average two gametes one in an ovule and the other in a pollen.
The second paragraph states that a mutant selfer will leave behind three gametes for every two of the outcrossing plants, with two in its selfed offspring and one in its outcrossed offspring.
What are the effect of the ovules and pollen here? How are these two statistical conclusions drawn? I would like to have a very detailed explanation.
Some interesting evolutionary questions arise with species that are capable of both selfing and outcrossing. For example, in many plant species there is an intrinsic advantage to selfing, which leads to the evolutionary conundrum: Why don't all plant species self? The situation is illustrated in Figure 4.4. The outcrossing pedigree on the right represents a typical individual in an outcrossing population of constant size. This individual leaves behind, on average, two gametes, one carried in an ovule and the other in a pollen grain. These gametes appear as filled circles in the figure.
Figure 4.4: The gametes produced by a selfer and an outcrosser. The p to the right of an arrow indicates that the parent’s contribution came from pollen; an o indicates it came from an ovule. The filled circles represent gametes from the illustrated parents; the open circles represent gametes chosen at random from the gamete pool.
Suppose a mutant appears that self-fertilizes all of its ovules, M illustrated on the left side of the figure. Suppose also that there is enough pollen in each individual of this species that the few grains needed for self-pollination by the mutant represent a small fraction of the total pollen. As a consequence, the selfing mutant has essentially the same quantity of pollen available for outcrossing as does a nonselfing individual. All else being equal, the selfing mutant will leave behind three gametes for every two of the outcrossing plants, as indicated by the three filled circles in the figure. Two of the gametes are in its selfed offspring; one is in its outcrossed offspring. Thus, the mutant should increase in frequency, perhaps leading to the establishment of selfing as the usual mode of reproduction.