One of the major impediments to progress in our understanding of the evolutionary causes and consequences of recombination (or lack thereof) is the paucity of good model systems, with well-developed genetic and genomic resources, that also harbor natural variation in the reliance on meiosis. I will give a broad overview of our work on the Daphnia pulex (microcrustacean) system, which harbors numerous asexual lineages resulting from the contagious spread of a meiosis suppressor throughout the sexual segment of the species. Our work has begun to provide a clear picture of the molecular consequences of the abstinence from sex, including the development of deleterious mutation load, while also yielding considerable insight into the molecular underpinnings of meiosis suppression itself.