Thursday, 16 April 2009
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Girls Rule In This Ant Farm
via Telegraph:Experts have discovered a South American species that is exclusively female and reproduces asexually by cloning the queen.Reproduction without sex is fairly common in the ant world, but the Mycocepurus smithii is the first known to be a male-free species. The phenomenon takes the stress out of finding a mate and may help keep the peace in colonies, the scientists believe....
The findings run counter to scientific theories that say asexuality is an evolutionary disadvantage because it eliminates mutations and generates genetic diversity more slowly than sexual reproduction....
One possible advantage of asexual reproduction is that it avoids the need to find a mate and the efforts associated with mating, according to the researchers.
On the one hand, awesome. Clone that shit.
On the other hand, it'd be like an all-girls' school for the rest of time...and I don't think I could handle that. I think girl ants are probably as vicious as human girls ("I know, right?!").
If you could eliminate guys and just clone yourself to reproduce, would you do it?
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Comments (17)
the queen is scary. whenever ants start invading my house i look for the queen and im always momentarily intimidated before smashing her....
H'oh man.
"The findings run counter to scientific theories that say asexuality is
an evolutionary disadvantage because it eliminates mutations and
generates genetic diversity more slowly than sexual reproduction...."
Except that's not true at all. the scientific theory that asexual reproduction leads to poor genetic diversity still holds true. It's still an evolutionary disadvantage.
The worst part about this little blurb? It's three sentences long. The second and fourth sentences are pretty well identical.
Oh, and, please don't eliminate me? :P
Hell no.
I'd go crazy if there were no men around.
No, if I wanted to do that, I can just talk to myself in the bathroom mirror until I die.
Eeeeeeek! Hell no. I need my man with me, not dead.
No, I think there being more of myself would lead to trouble, fast :P Plus, I neeeeed males. I don't want them gone :P.
Creepy. I think males are there for a reason and vice versa. Life would just be pointless otherwise. I don't think I could handle an all girl's way of life. Men are very much needed here, though there is only one I would marry at this point.
I think men play an important role in society--sure sometimes girls geet hurt by them and we get into relationships with men and then the relationships falls apart--BUT that happens on both sides (men and women) so we can't blame the guys. C'mon, some guys are such sweet hearts. Seriously though, men play such an important role in family life too and I don't think we'd be better off without them, I think it'd be worse.
deffinitely not.
Having just eliminated all males, there is now no longer a male self for me to clone in order to reproduce.
Your question necessitates a contradictory answer.
"The phenomenon takes the stress out of finding a mate and may help keep the peace in colonies, the scientists believe...."
i've heard that the word for trouble in chinese has two chicks under a roof, coincidentally. i don't know if that's true though--we never learned that word in the year i studied the language.
@TheNotoriousGOD@xanga - It's the character for man repeated twice, with the female in the middle.
At Datingish:
"If you could eliminate guys and just clone yourself to reproduce, would you do it? "Why didn't you ask guys this question too?
Freak no, I like sex. hahahahaha.
I just read on the BBC that China has 32 Million more men than women....kind of the reverse of that ant world but how about we watch how much they enjoy no mates and see how it goes....before we try it on a larger scale.
Sounds like a bad prison movie
Asexual reproduction actually never evolves as far as I've ever heard. The genes can only go downhill if the individual survives. As for sexually reproducing species, the problem is that all genes are being passed on now and there aren't any genes being deselected. That is with the exception of the people who Darwin themselves prior to reproduction, of course. In asexual reproduction, there is no variety in the genes as everyone is the same. The flaw lies in whenever one of the individuals gets infected with something or gets injured. Because it's a clone, it'll pass on certain traits that aren't necessarily favorable. Therefore deselection would be the best for that individual at that point. Read up on Evolution by Natural Selection if you want to know more about this stuff.
I couldn't. I'd definatly miss the companionship.