Organism Survives 100 Million Years Without Sex 343
zyl0x writes "The Times has an interesting article online on the discovery of a 100-million-year-old micro-organism which has survived its entire lifespan without sex." From the article "A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years has overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety. Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of natural selection. Researchers say that their study "refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species".
Re:Slashdotters (Score:5, Informative)
Impressive, except that..... (Score:2, Informative)
Sex *does* lead to diversity *within* a species, which can be good for keeping ahead of parasites and diseases, and all the genetic duplication can help accelerate diversification. But sexual reproduction, in the absence of other sources of genetic variation, does not lead to speciation.
so what? (Score:4, Informative)
I would fathom that mutation might happen more often with sexual reproduction, and thus asexual reproduction could slow the pace of evolution, but again, that's not to say it doesn't happen. Because it very surely does, as we know from the mutation of all those single-celled asexual organisms we know about. Like every disease out there. It is absolutely nonsense to claim otherwise. Bacteria multiply asexually. Protists do too. This is why diseases resist new drugs. Countless species of plants reproduce asexually. Myriad species of all these kingdoms have survived for 100 million years.
The headline might as well be, 'there has been life on Earth a long time.'
Re:Scientific name (Score:1, Informative)
Not that I agree that that's the right place where the law should say life begins, but it far more defensible than some arbitrary time such as second trimester.
Always heard... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Welcome to slashdot (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slashdotters (Score:1, Informative)
Come on, I know reading the article is too much but you could at least read the summary.
Re:About the title... (Score:2, Informative)
I mean, I haven't ever had sex, but since age 14 I'm sure I've had THOUSANDS of orgasms. (Okay you didn't need to know that - would it help if I mentioned that I'm a girl?)
Re:so what? (Score:3, Informative)
John Maynard Smith [wikipedia.org], not a small thinker among biologist, called these creatures "An Evolutionary Scandal" [harvardmagazine.com].
It is true that bacteria produce asexuall, but they still exchange genetic material using conjugation [wikipedia.org].
Re:Horribly misreported (Score:2, Informative)
FTFA:
Re:...Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Welcome to slashdot (Score:1, Informative)
Nope, no stereotypes here.
Sex and Diversity (Score:5, Informative)
The purpose of sexual reproduction (mitosis) is to blend genetic traits, and thus diversify the species. However, I can think of a number of ways that genes can be modified without mitosis:
"Clumping" is caused by the electoral system (Score:3, Informative)
e.g. The USA - a 2 party state. Israel - a 12+ party state.
i.e. Clumping is of expediency, not choice. Change the electoral system and left/right loses all meaning. It only has meaning in the US because American politics is one dimensional.
Here is the original article and... (Score:3, Informative)
I always have trouble reading about findings of "two close species". Article claims that they are too different genetically to be one species, too different ecological niches to be one species, yet dispite the differences they find it proving that they are "evolutionary related". If they are too distant then they might be created using non-evolutionary ways (aliens came, looked at the rotifer and decided to make it live in another organ of the lice). If they are similar, then what does prevent us to call asexual organisms one species?
In sexual organisms there is a clear boundary between species - productive progeny of mating between two organisms. If a couple does not produce productive progeny - male and female belong to different species, if they do - they are from the same species. That is why using asexual organisms to support pseudo-science of evolution is particularly lame: all the arguments are tautologically meaningless reducing themselves to "diversity".
About that: authors write First of all, that has been traditional view long time ago, but evolutionists have been convinced that sex is not necessary for evolution for quite some time. And you do not have to be a specialist to know that. Look at bacteria.
Second. How would you know if clades are displaying the same pattern or different pattern or any pattern, if you for sure do not know all the representatives of the clade that ever existed? For example, according to "traditional" view of evolutionists reptiles were much more diversed before 100M years ago than they are now.
It is essentially comparing diversity of two arbitrarily (which is different from randomly) selected samples. And the difference between "arbitrarily" and "randomly" is that first is biased selection (some species exist no more for all kinds of reasons).
And this is a beginning of the article.
Re:Silly reporter, sex is not required (Score:3, Informative)
Just to give you an idea of how many rotifers there are, go pick up some dried lawn clippings from your back yard, throw them in a glass of water (let it sit over night before adding the grass so the chlorine can evaporate). Then a couple days later, take a look in a microscope. You'll probably find thousands of rotifers in your glass of water. Of course, this assumes that, like me, you're a biology geek and you have a microscope.
Personally, I think rotifers are amazingly cool to watch. I've spent many an hour watching them feed and, being completely transparent, digest, and then excrete material. Because some remain relatively stationary, they're much easier to view than say a paramecium which zips around (though you can get viscous additives to slow them down).