Sorry folks,
due to a misinterpretation, I thought the article formerly posted here has been rejected by a peer reviewed journal. The editor told me on the phone that it has not been accepted and the letter took a very long time to arrive. I therefore thought I could as well try and blog it. It was an experiment as I never blogged before. Alas, just today the letter arrived and it said that the article cannot been accepted in its present form but would be reconsidered after re-writing. I therefore have to delete it from this site, but will keep you informed on the progress.
Cheers
Joe
Joachim L. Dagg (Dr. from Univ. Göttingen)
Lünertorstr. 19
21335 Lüneburg
Germany
E-mail: [email protected]
The so called paradox of sexual reproduction is a long standing problem of evolutionary biology. It is concerned with the admittedly somewhat strange sounding idea that sexual reproduction should not be the prevalent mode of reproduction in the animal and plant kingdoms, given that some species manage to do without through so called parthenogenesis. What happens in parthenogenesis is that an egg starts to develop without having been fertilized by a sperm cell first. Parthenogenetic females of various species save a lot of trouble. I mentioned parthenogenetic forms of fish and flatworms already, but they are distributed throughout the tree of life. They can simply reproduce without costs in addition to the resources needed for producing offspring. Yet the vast majority of plants and animals reproduces sexually. That’s the paradox of sex. It has troubled evolutionary biologists for over 30 years.
I hoped to find a sober forum for discussing this (admittedly esoteric) problem with other evolutionary biologists here. I nevertheless hope you had fun reading my paper. By the way, no drugs involved on my side. Science really is that weird :-)
Some people prefer to take drugs because, when they get “high” they don’t distinguish anything, whether their sex partner has managed to attract them or not. It doesn’t matter anymore because drugs have the power to change completely a person’s behavior and that’s very concerning. At http://www.aboutdrugtreatment.org I’ve read some stuff about the implication of taking drugs and about treatments to detox oneself and I must say it’s rather tough. It’s better choose to have sex or not consciently.
Joachim Dagg