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: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:15PM
Like how the parasites running the EU want a homogeneous race of mixed untermensch to quickly adapt to globalist slavery, using murderous Islamic savages as forced breeding stock?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:24PM
Yes, Eth, we all realize what sort of fantasy you would need to imagine to be able to procreate, physically. Lucky for our gene pool it still requires a willing partner, though.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:26PM
Eth, are you okay? Most of your output over the last couple of weeks has been really substandard. It's missing that "this is an obvious troll" factor. Are you feeling sick, or did you break the number one rule of drug dealing and start sampling the merchandise?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @09:37PM
You are completely incoherent - you need more ethanol, not that methanol bath liquids stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @07:55PM
You mean using the europeans as forced breeding stock as the hairy islamic apes rape the beautiful european women. Never mind the stupid European progressive feminists who think its progressive and edgy to jump on those hairy things. Disgusting.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:18PM
The question in the first sentence is answered. I was about to give an explanation about genetic diversity in the population.
So I'll give this answer instead. Because sex is more fun that cloning. Yet there are plenty of people researching cloning.
Q. How much did Santa's sled cost?
A. Nothing. It was on the house.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 22 2016, @09:32PM
The irony is that when polygamous humans have sex for fun more often, they expose themselves to more diseases -- including the kind that don't go away.
In other words, when they engage in "Tinder-style" dating.
Even knew a guy who caught crabs once (which is even more skanky in a way, because it implies lack of regular hygiene). Said it itched "like fire."
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:08PM
Because sex is more fun that cloning. Yet there are plenty of people researching cloning.
"I'm sorry honey, I'll be home late tonight. I'm still in the lab doing cloning research. What? Why do you keep saying I'm stupid?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:30PM
Apparently if a female komodo dragon doesn't have male company she'll even get herself pregnant in order to get somebody around to have sex with. And due to genetics, the offspring of said clone pregnancy will only ever be male.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Funny) by Nerdfest on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:48PM
I'm totally using this.
Although, it does require a certain amount of forward thinking on the female's part, which normally works against me.
(Score: 0) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:56PM
Painting yourself up in Blackface might tip the scales in your favor during your explanation.
That, and stuffing a sock into the front of your undies.
(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. I have always been here. ---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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @09:39PM
I've heard about this theory as the top explanation of sex for roughly 5 years. This seems to be confirmation of the top theory.
It's essentially security-through-obscurity: the offspring have semi-custom (re-combined) genes, making it harder for invaders to depend on an existing pattern of genes.
The script-kiddie viruses cannot as easily use pre-canned attack algorithms or techniques since each offspring is genetically unique.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @06:59PM
Yeah. Sex is one way for slower reproducing multicellular organisms to keep up with rapidly reproducing organisms.
If there's not enough diversity they can get wiped out: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-the-banana/ [damninteresting.com]
With sex a species can have thousands or even millions of different individuals with genes that "mostly" work in practice, and hopefully enough of them mate with the fitter individuals selecting for more genes that work better in the changing environment. It's like multiple subspecies swapping genes.
Without sex or other gene transfer the evolution can only be by mutations many of which aren't proven to work (not a problem if the species reproduces rapidly).
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:15PM
hey baby. wanna see my large-scale benefit?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Touché) by mhajicek on Thursday December 22 2016, @10:30PM
No.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @12:28AM
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f8/1e/f8/f81ef8b1d72f0d51ccc8785e4bbc3c97.jpg [pinimg.com]
(Score: 1) by rickatech on Friday December 23 2016, @06:13AM