Evolution of sexual reproduction

[jevg]

Geokinkladze
Well I have waited nearly a month for Darby to clarify his statements.
Since he has been active on other threads I assume he does not wish to do so.

I have no idea if your understanding of his statement is correct or not.

I would have thought that 150 years of accumulating evidence since Darwin's day has produced a fairly mature fossil record.

[Geokinkladze]

Even after 150 years I'm sure paleontologist's have only managed to scratch the surface. It's a weak pun, but very apt because the current limit for paleontologist's is the reliance on mother earth to reveal the fossils rather than being able to go anywhere they want and dig for them.

The really interesting hominid finds have only been in the last 70 years, yet they are supposedly easier to find because they are most recent.

Paleontology is a lottery.

[jevg]

You may well be right about paleontology being a lottery

If you are though the entire geological column and the dates arrived at upon, which paleontology relies on becomes a questionable science discipline.

The Principle of Faunal Succession is one of the four cornerstones on which Stratigraphy’s relative dating is built.

Faunal Succession is about the fossil record and in particular what is known as index fossils.

Did you mean what you said or am I reading too much into your statement.

[Geokinkladze]

Paleontology is a lottery in the sense that:

1) Funds need to be raised to support the work.
2) On average you won't find anything to justify the expenditure.

As opposed to drilling for oil where:

1) Funds need to be raised to support the work.
2) On average you will find something to justify the expenditure.

So only rich benefactors tend to support paleontology whereas huge corporations will be supported by digging for oil (and incidently both make great use of the science of Biostratigraphy)

[enarees]

I am looking for information on the evolution of sexual reproduction. I have recently come to realize what a novel and complex process this is, especially from an evolutionary standpoint. How is it that we have thousands or perhaps millions of species, each on their own unique evolutionary journey, with each species containing two sexes capable of breeding with each other? Each sex of a particular species has to have their own sexual reproductive systems and mechanisms evolve at the same rate as their counterpart and always remain sexually compatible. And this has to occur in every species as they continually change and evolve into new species. This sound like a very difficult process, but one I haven't heard discussed before. What is the best way of understanding that process?

This theme is nonsense.

Sex(in low and high forms) is the main instrument for achieving evolutionary development.

[StevePush]

Obviously males must remain compatible with at least some females or become genetic dead-ends.

Females don't always remain compatible. Some species are parthenogenic, that is, females produce clones of themselves.

Some fish can switch sex if the population's sex ratio gives the opposite sex a reproductive advantage.

But the really interesting question is, Why is there sex at all? Why not be immortal or parthenogenic? There must be a big advantage to sexual reproduction, because most plants and animals do it at least some of the time and many do it exclusively. Indeed, sexual reproduction has evolved at least six times. Apparently recombination allows organisms to avoid fatal doses of damaging mutations.