Meiosis is conserved across eukaryotes yet varies in the details of its execution. Here we describe a new comparative model system for molecular analysis of meiosis, the nematode Pristionchus pacificus , a distant relative of the widely studied model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. P. pacificus shares many anatomical and other features that facilitate analysis of meiosis in C. elegans . However, while C. elegans has lost the meiosis-specific recombinase Dmc1 and evolved a recombination-independent mechanism to synapse its chromosomes, P. pacificus expresses both DMC-1 and RAD-51. We find that SPO-11 and DMC-1 are required for stable homolog pairing, synapsis, and crossover formation, while RAD-51 is dispensable for these key meiotic processes. RAD-51 and DMC-1 localize sequentially to chromosomes during meiotic prophase and show nonoverlapping functions. We also present a new genetic map for P. pacificus that reveals a crossover landscape very similar to that of C. elegans , despite marked divergence in the regulation of synapsis and crossing-over between these lineages.