What the fuck? Posting?! Madness
So, let's see here.
My life has turned on a note worthy downward spiral with about everything in my life going to hell at about the same time.
And THEN, today I check my junk mail tonight and it entirely consists of everything I need in my life.
Ads for cheap male enhancement (probably cialis or generic viagra), easy women, cheap hard copy pornography, and amazingly, both weight loss drugs and a UBC health assessment.
Also, after I've more thoroughly trashed my life there will be nothing left besides complicated suicide to please me, and bam. Life insurance ad comes in.
Anywho. Just thought I'd share. Misery loves company.
As advertised: (sorry)
Bisexual reproduction. Why? And I don't mean in reference to my impressions of the farier sex being entirely negative at this point, but in fact to the evolution "switch" that was made in the evolutionary chain in which cells changed from reproduction by fission to two independant fully developped organisms having a largely amusing (at least from the facial expressions that go on) time which creates a third (or more) similar organisms but geneticly unidentical to either.
Now as far as I can tell, the allure of bisexual reproduction (two different genders, both required for mating) from an evolutionary standpoint is an overall increase in the diversity of organisms. It speeds up evolution because you end up getting new combinations of genetic material much more often and thus, more oppertunities for "new" specific sub-types of the same organism (by reducing the number of "duplicates" one organism [or line of organisms] will produce). At least as compared to asexual reproduction which in larger creatures, can only make more of the same thing as genetic material sharing usually only occurs on the cellular level and largely by accident (two cells bumping together and a protein or two jumping from one to another).
This genetic unity is demonstrated beautifully in anemones, the little tentacles thingies that sit on the bottom of salt water bodies of water and devour plankton voraciously (you know what I'm talking about, the thing the clown fish live in at the start of Finding Nemo!). These reproduce by fission (division) and if one particular expample of more aggressive or fast growing than others, you quickly end up with fields, and fields, of just THAT one type of anemones with all the others gone, wiped out by localized changes which kill small groups of them, but the more aggressive ones spread out more, making them less likely to perish.
So why aren't ALL creatures bisexual? Or even trisexual (or more) but I don't think there is a single example of any higher orders than 2. I figure, it is a function of population size and density. Asexual reproduction is easy. You can do it by yourself should you have the energy requirements (hehe). But you only get extremely minor changes in genetic material and thus, as a species your overall rate of variation production is slow. Bisexual reproduction is harder to pull off, you have to find a second thing to do it with. So say the evolutionary trend is towards faster evolution via a higher rate of combinatorics of genetic information.
(46 chromosomes to the person, thousands of internal degrees of freedom per chromosome, that's at our current level of complexity, well over a googol total "different" people, and although I have no sources, I'd say evolution tends to increasing complexity [with Jamieson putting in his $0.02 with that "the rate of increased complexity would probably decrease as complexity increased". Not that I agree with it, I'm just not an expert, neither is Jamieson but he's better than me])
So, what controls the evolutionary "switch" when? I mean, there is already a cellular "sharing" mechanism avaliable, the bumping into each other and maybe a protein (or something) jumping ship. Take that, scale it up, you got bisexual reproduction. Now, I figure there is probably a critical point, in comparing rates of evolutionary change where asexual reproduction gets passed by bisexual reproduction. (ie. your population gets large enough that the increased time to reproduce (ie. mate finding time) is offset by the larger set of offspring it is possible to have. Bisexual reproduction never gets easier than asexual, but it begins to produce variations in offspring faster) for some given set of variables. Like density and total population.
So there it is, all laid out. I think. Low complexity organisms can easily reproduce asexually by normal cell division, but from a the viewpoint of a species, you are more likely to get those rare beneficial combinations of genetic material if your set of genetic material to choose from is larger (doubled in the case of bisexual reproduction).
Why did I do this? Boredom. Sheer and utter boredom.
And hate. Lots and lots of hate.
posted by McAnerbot @ 10:08 PM
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