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from the never-used-that-excuse-before dept.
Why does sex exist when organisms that clone themselves use less time and energy, and do not need a mate to produce offspring? Researchers at the University of Stirling aiming to answer this age-old question have discovered that sex can help the next generation resist infection.
Populations that clone themselves are entirely female and do not need sex to reproduce. As sex requires males, and males do not produce offspring themselves, an entirely clonal population should always reproduce faster than a sexual one.
Yet while some animal and plant species can reproduce without sex, such as komodo dragons, starfish and bananas, sex is still the dominant mode of reproduction in the natural world.
Scientists know that sex allows genes to mix, allowing populations to quickly evolve and adapt to changing environments, including rapidly evolving parasites.
However, for sex to beat cloning as a reproduction strategy, there must be large-scale benefits that make a difference to the next generation. The theory has been difficulty to test as most organisms are either wholly sexual or clonal so cannot be compared easily.
A team of experts from the University of Stirling have taken an innovative approach to test the costs and benefits of sex. Using an organism that can reproduce both ways, the waterflea, researchers found sexually produced offspring were more than twice as resistant to infectious disease as their clonal sisters.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday December 22 2016, @09:25PM
Evolution has no foresight. Evolution doesn't work that way. At best you could say something like descendants of sexually bimorphic species were better at surviving infections/diseases/parasites, etc., which is one of the standard theories for why sexually bimorphic species are so common, and why parthenogenetic species tend to go extinct. Note how the direction of the arrow of causation has changed. Evolution has no foresight.
However, this doesn't seem to apply to the bdelloid rotifers. So this needs explaining. They've been an expanding group of parthenogenetic rotifers for quite a long time. One can't really talk about species in a parthenogenetic group, but if we could we would say they compose an immense number of species descendant from the original parthenogenetic individual.
P.S.: This isn't a criticism of the original paper which I haven't read, and am likely not competent to read. It is, however, a STRONG criticism of the summary.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:28PM
P.S.: This isn't a criticism of the original paper which I haven't read, and am likely not competent to read.
1. I don't need to read that paper -- it's full of diversionary mumbledygook and was written by activist scientists with an agenda.
It is, however, a STRONG criticism of the summary.
2. "There's a guy on the internet who proved that evolutionary theory produces inconsistent results! Stick with the way the Lord intelligently designed the world and you'll be in good shape."
See how easy it is to prove creationism? Just from a postscript, even.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @11:52PM
Well the description here is certainly of pseudoscience, it does not motivate me to read the paper. Here is the apparent reasoning:
Observation (O): sexually produced [waterflea] offspring were more than twice as resistant to infectious disease as their clonal sisters
Theory (T) : Sex Evolved to Help Future Generations Fight Infection
1) If T is true, then we would observe O
2) We observe O, therefore T is true
Besides that this "theory" sounds pretty sketchy (I don't find it difficult to imagine scenarios where T is true but we don't see O, and I bet they didn't predict any numbers like "twice as resistant"), this is straight up affirming the consequent. Did they think of any other reasons we might observe O even if T was false, then attempt to distinguish between these explanations?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Friday December 23 2016, @04:06AM
Agreed.
Car analogy: my car uses gas, therefore the engine evolved to burn gasoline.
I'm sure someone has an even better analogy out there, but mine evolved on the fly (therefore, flies evolved to prove analogies).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @06:26PM
I believe it's a literary shortcut. Our languages naturally anthropomorphize a lot of things because humans made them in their own image such that to give a more technically accurate description would probably take a lot more text and make for a long-winded headline. It's a trade-off between brevity and accuracy.