Charlie Bell wrote: > >>> In mammals, that just leads to lots of unmated males, with fierce >>> competition. The overall ratio, if you're talking lions or deer or >>> something, is 50-50, >> >> The end result is disequilibrium. > > ....example please? Of a natural diploid population with a highly > skewed male/female ratio. Haplodiploidy causes sex ratio bias, as I > discussed previously. > This ratio can come after a fierce and deadly competition among males. Those males that are excluded are, darwinially, dead.
>> I am still waiting for the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium models! > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy_weinberg > Wikipedia, the Borg of all Knowledge :-) > See also Fisher's sex ratio theories, and Evolutionarily Stable > Strategies. > Ok - I will. >> Why do you think Glory Season so unlikely, with high-tech replacing >> the genetic manipulation? Lots of lesbians cloning themselves, and >> eventually mixing genes with another lesbian? > > Because it would take careful control of a fixed population. If you > reintroduced "wild-type" human genes, they'd out-compete. Maybe in a > highly authoritarian and disciplined commune. But yes, it seems > unlikely. This is science fiction, and it's a lot of fun, but it's > not terribly likely. More likely, IMO, are Baxter's "coalescents", > populations of eusocial humans, but even they'd require some > special conditions to evolve. > I am not aware of those groups. >> Males evolved *because* they were required to cause genetic variation. > > Or, more correctly, sex may have evolved to promote genetic > variation. Sexual dimorphism came later. It's not as cut and dried > as you seem to think, it's still one of the great issues in biology. > I know it's not so simple. Before males appeared as a separate subspecies, all creatures were hermaphrodites. Maybe there's a genetic advantage for the species, or to form new species, in having two sexes over hermaphroditism. > Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of the status of the problem. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_sex > Ok, I will see it. >> If we do *not* want to mutate - are you ready to replace Homo >> sapiens for >> Homo invictus or some other Evil Race from SF? - then cloning and >> elimination >> of variety is all we will get. > > Mutations are genetic changes at points in the genotype, not > phenotypic changes to population. Assuming you actually mean > "evolve" not "mutate", then, well, it's inevitable. Even the > changes you're talking about are evolution. > A sentient species can stop evolution of itself, even if the evolution would produce a "better" [to their sentient criteria] species. Alberto Monteiro _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
