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Premise  Apomixis (asexual reproduction by seed, spore, or egg) has evolved repeatedly across the tree of life. Studies of animals and angiosperms show that apomictic lineages are often evolutionarily short‐lived and frequently exhibit different distributions than their sexual relatives. However, apomixis is rare in these groups. Less is known about the role of apomixis in the evolution and biogeography of ferns, in which ~10% of species are apomictic. Apomixis is especially common in the fern genus  Pteris  (34–39% of species); however, because of the limited taxonomic and geographic sampling of previous studies, the true frequency of apomixis and its associations with geography and phylogeny in this lineage remain unclear.    Methods  We used spore analyses of herbarium specimens to determine reproductive mode for 127 previously unsampled  Pteris  species. Then we leveraged biogeographic and phylogenetic analyses to estimate the global distribution and evolution of apomixis in  Pteris .    Results  Among all  Pteris  species examined, we found that 21% are exclusively apomictic, 71% are exclusively sexual, and 8% have conflicting reports. Apomixis is unevenly distributed across the range of the genus, with the Paleotropics exhibiting the highest frequency, and has evolved numerous times across the  Pteris  phylogeny, with predominantly East Asian and South Asian clades containing the most apomictic species.    Conclusions  Apomixis arises frequently in  Pteris , but apomictic species do not appear to diversify. Species that encompass both apomictic and sexual populations have wider ranges than exclusively sexual or apomictic species, which suggests that sexual and apomictic ferns could occupy separate ecological niches.

When it only takes one to tango: assessing the impact of apomixis in the fern genus Pteris