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On this week’s episode Kelly and Zach talk to Dr. Ryan Earley about why so many species reproduce sexually rather than asexually. We then talk to Elizabeth Lee and Robert Denton, whose #SciFund projects focus on animals with uncommon reproductive systems.
LINKS
Dr. Ryan Earley and “Why are there males?”
Red Queen Hypothesis (check out this great book for more information on this topic)
Video of mangrove rivulus jumping from the lab of Dr. Gibbs
Mangrove rivulus hangs out in logs
Founder population/founder effect
SciFund project bringing Daphnia back to life to study long-term effects of pollution
Elizabeth Lee and endocrine disrupters
Ethinyl estradiol disrupts sexual selection in sand gobies
Intersex smallmouth bass in the Potomac
Robert Denton and unisexual salamanders
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You covered the issue of sexual vs. asexual reproduction, but an interesting question that wasn’t addressed is “Why are there males?” I understand the benefits of gene-sharing, conferred by sexual reproduction, but why does this require sexual dimorphism? One can easily imagine a system where two individuals can share genes without having to be of different sexes. Ursula K. Le Guin envisioned one such possibility in her 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, where individuals can change gender, but especially if we don’t restrict ourselves to viviparous reproduction, why does there even have to be gender? Why does one partner have to contribute the “egg”, and the other the “sperm”? Why not have two equivalent (non-gendered) haploid cells which combine to form a merged offspring (and, speaking of haploid cells, it took me a while to figure out that the word you were tossing around was “ploidy”; a mention of the words “haploid” and “diploid” in the explanation would have helped.)? This ought to double your chances of finding a mate.