7 ms·

Learning about evolution from species who thrive without sexual reproduction

135 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

kod 10y ago
That article title is unfortunate, because it's actually the most interesting thing I've read all week.
- maus42 10y ago
  Agreed. The article is mostly about parthenogenetic reproduction and curious evolutionary history of a certain lizard species. addendum. The subtitle ("What we can learn about evolution from species who thrive without sexual reproduction") is more descriptive.
- Maken 10y ago
  The title is pure clickbait that has little to no relation with the actual content.
  - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
    It's not 'pure' clickbait if you read down to the part about the whiptail lizard's being able to take on either sexual role which stimulates reproduction but that's a rather minor detail. Also it's not at all supported that unisex whiptail lizard's are better off than normal sexually reproducing lizards. In general I tend to agree title is not well fitted and the subtitle does better: > What we can learn about evolution from species who thrive without sexual reproduction. One can only speculate that their editor came from a publication with a habit of writing clickbait titles.
virtuexru 10y ago
Written by a virgin.
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
Interesting comment in the article's native discussion: > Chris Jankowski • 2 hours ago > The author says that sex "imposes a huge cost on a species, and that cost is called “males.”" Well, if the males are such a cost to a species, then why nature does not respond by heavily skewing the sex ratio of the offspring towards females. Males produce sperm which is cheap compared with the cost of producing eggs. A male could fertilize eggs of many - tens or hundreds of females. So the ratio could be 1 to 10 or even 1 to 100. But I do not know of a species that would do this. > Some marsupials - possums and kangaroos create some skew, but is is slight and in response to environmental conditions or is more sequencing oriented depending on the age of the breeding female.
- mnw21cam 10y ago
  When male/female determination depends on which chromosome you inherit from a parent, it is hard for a mechanism to arise for the chance to be anything other than 50/50. A lot of mammal species eliminate excess males using other methods - mainly bloody fights to the death, which also tends to result in the remaining males being the strongest ones.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Except that it's not 50/50, at least in the case of humans. With humans, it's about 1.07/1, in favor of males. The mechanism is much more complicated than a 50/50 chance of inheriting some chromosome.
- chongli 10y ago
  The answer to the first question is Fisher's Principle [0]: Suppose male births are less common than female. A newborn male then has better mating prospects than a newborn female, and therefore can expect to have more offspring. Therefore parents genetically disposed to produce males tend to have more than average numbers of grandchildren born to them. Therefore the genes for male-producing tendencies spread, and male births become more common. As the 1:1 sex ratio is approached, the advantage associated with producing males dies away. The same reasoning holds if females are substituted for males throughout. Therefore 1:1 is the equilibrium ratio. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle
ungamed 10y ago
Yet another article produced by someone with intent to discredit males. > "It’d be so much easier if everyone were female.” I guess sex would be easier for the author. > "Sex is far from a perfect way to reproduce. It imposes a huge cost on a species, and that cost is called “males.”" This "cost" is apparently a worthy "investment", I don't see any lizard people building spaceships. Anyone who has spent any significant time with a wide selection of humans will immediately discount these statements. It is poor journalism when the writer mixes real science research with misandrist statements.
- chillingeffect 10y ago
  I don't think it's a wholesale effort to discredit males, but it's certainly provocative bait from the epicenter of so-called politically correct culture. The author and her in-circle probably have a laugh, but they tragically can't see they're surrounding themselves with a bubble. So they're putting themselves into social debt. It's hard to watch, like someone cashing a check at a liquor store on payday to buy alcohol, but they're adults and can learn from their mistakes. The mixture of science and entertainment has been a puzzling feature of American culture. It's such a part of us that we don't dare to question it, but when you think about it, not all science has been beneficial to us. So much of science is simply about marketing, social control, weaponry and short-term visions to make money. It is worthwhile to question which branches of science are worth following and which are not.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  it's about lizards.
- legodt 10y ago
  MRA go home
  - ungamed 10y ago
    Thanks for the love, but you'd be wrong, Keep calling names because you can't deal with "words" on the internet.
bitwize 10y ago
I'm reminded of the asari, an all-female race of aliens from Mass Effect. They reproduce asexually and so don't actually have sex, but there's a thing they do called "embracing eternity" that's very pleasurable for both partners and somehow lets the asari introduce genetic variation into their offspring. (They also look very sexy -- to several different species -- allowing them a wide pool of partners to "embrace eternity" with.)
zer0gravity 10y ago
This is very interesting. This particular whiptail lizard carries 3 sets of DNA, instead of the regular 2 that the sexually reproducing species have. This seems to be a hybrid species that resulted from the sexual reproduction of two different species many thousands years ago. From the 3 sets of DNA, 2 are from the ancestral mother and 1 from the ancestral father, and using this trick, each generation manages to keep the whole DNA information of the original two without loosing it, like it happens in the sexual reproduction, and also provide enough genetic variation in newborns to allow evolution. So I would say that basically, each individual is the child of that ancestral pair that generated this lineage.
akkartik 10y ago
Reading this article, I had a minor epiphany: Sex is just really really sophisticated ASLR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomiza...
jotadambalakiri 10y ago
I don't understand what nautil.us tries to be, it seems neither more interesting nor more scientific than the science/tech column of any major newspaper.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  It started off more interesting and more scientific, but once it had established the brand, it quickly had a reversion to the mean. Shitty content will always be cheaper to find and produce; hyperbole and specious associations will always attract more clicks. The magazine business is tough.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  If you found the article to be unscientific, a few specifics would be greatly appreciated.

135 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

kod 10y ago

That article title is unfortunate, because it's actually the most interesting thing I've read all week.

maus42 10y ago
Agreed. The article is mostly about parthenogenetic reproduction and curious evolutionary history of a certain lizard species. addendum. The subtitle ("What we can learn about evolution from species who thrive without sexual reproduction") is more descriptive.
Maken 10y ago
The title is pure clickbait that has little to no relation with the actual content.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  It's not 'pure' clickbait if you read down to the part about the whiptail lizard's being able to take on either sexual role which stimulates reproduction but that's a rather minor detail. Also it's not at all supported that unisex whiptail lizard's are better off than normal sexually reproducing lizards. In general I tend to agree title is not well fitted and the subtitle does better: > What we can learn about evolution from species who thrive without sexual reproduction. One can only speculate that their editor came from a publication with a habit of writing clickbait titles.

virtuexru 10y ago

Written by a virgin.

forgotpwtomain 10y ago

Interesting comment in the article's native discussion: > Chris Jankowski • 2 hours ago > The author says that sex "imposes a huge cost on a species, and that cost is called “males.”" Well, if the males are such a cost to a species, then why nature does not respond by heavily skewing the sex ratio of the offspring towards females. Males produce sperm which is cheap compared with the cost of producing eggs. A male could fertilize eggs of many - tens or hundreds of females. So the ratio could be 1 to 10 or even 1 to 100. But I do not know of a species that would do this. > Some marsupials - possums and kangaroos create some skew, but is is slight and in response to environmental conditions or is more sequencing oriented depending on the age of the breeding female.

mnw21cam 10y ago
When male/female determination depends on which chromosome you inherit from a parent, it is hard for a mechanism to arise for the chance to be anything other than 50/50. A lot of mammal species eliminate excess males using other methods - mainly bloody fights to the death, which also tends to result in the remaining males being the strongest ones.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Except that it's not 50/50, at least in the case of humans. With humans, it's about 1.07/1, in favor of males. The mechanism is much more complicated than a 50/50 chance of inheriting some chromosome.
chongli 10y ago
The answer to the first question is Fisher's Principle [0]: Suppose male births are less common than female. A newborn male then has better mating prospects than a newborn female, and therefore can expect to have more offspring. Therefore parents genetically disposed to produce males tend to have more than average numbers of grandchildren born to them. Therefore the genes for male-producing tendencies spread, and male births become more common. As the 1:1 sex ratio is approached, the advantage associated with producing males dies away. The same reasoning holds if females are substituted for males throughout. Therefore 1:1 is the equilibrium ratio. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle

ungamed 10y ago

Yet another article produced by someone with intent to discredit males. > "It’d be so much easier if everyone were female.” I guess sex would be easier for the author. > "Sex is far from a perfect way to reproduce. It imposes a huge cost on a species, and that cost is called “males.”" This "cost" is apparently a worthy "investment", I don't see any lizard people building spaceships. Anyone who has spent any significant time with a wide selection of humans will immediately discount these statements. It is poor journalism when the writer mixes real science research with misandrist statements.

chillingeffect 10y ago
I don't think it's a wholesale effort to discredit males, but it's certainly provocative bait from the epicenter of so-called politically correct culture. The author and her in-circle probably have a laugh, but they tragically can't see they're surrounding themselves with a bubble. So they're putting themselves into social debt. It's hard to watch, like someone cashing a check at a liquor store on payday to buy alcohol, but they're adults and can learn from their mistakes. The mixture of science and entertainment has been a puzzling feature of American culture. It's such a part of us that we don't dare to question it, but when you think about it, not all science has been beneficial to us. So much of science is simply about marketing, social control, weaponry and short-term visions to make money. It is worthwhile to question which branches of science are worth following and which are not.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
it's about lizards.
legodt 10y ago
MRA go home
- ungamed 10y ago
  Thanks for the love, but you'd be wrong, Keep calling names because you can't deal with "words" on the internet.

bitwize 10y ago

I'm reminded of the asari, an all-female race of aliens from Mass Effect. They reproduce asexually and so don't actually have sex, but there's a thing they do called "embracing eternity" that's very pleasurable for both partners and somehow lets the asari introduce genetic variation into their offspring. (They also look very sexy -- to several different species -- allowing them a wide pool of partners to "embrace eternity" with.)

zer0gravity 10y ago

This is very interesting. This particular whiptail lizard carries 3 sets of DNA, instead of the regular 2 that the sexually reproducing species have. This seems to be a hybrid species that resulted from the sexual reproduction of two different species many thousands years ago. From the 3 sets of DNA, 2 are from the ancestral mother and 1 from the ancestral father, and using this trick, each generation manages to keep the whole DNA information of the original two without loosing it, like it happens in the sexual reproduction, and also provide enough genetic variation in newborns to allow evolution. So I would say that basically, each individual is the child of that ancestral pair that generated this lineage.

akkartik 10y ago

Reading this article, I had a minor epiphany: Sex is just really really sophisticated ASLR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomiza...

jotadambalakiri 10y ago

I don't understand what nautil.us tries to be, it seems neither more interesting nor more scientific than the science/tech column of any major newspaper.

pessimizer 10y ago
It started off more interesting and more scientific, but once it had established the brand, it quickly had a reversion to the mean. Shitty content will always be cheaper to find and produce; hyperbole and specious associations will always attract more clicks. The magazine business is tough.
dwaltrip 10y ago
If you found the article to be unscientific, a few specifics would be greatly appreciated.