Problems with Mutation and the Evolution of the Sexes

While Sexual Reproduction is involved with genders, it's not the same.

Actually, "it" was meaning the gender mutation.

On the other hand, mutation is something known to happen, not evolution. As for some evidence, how about the year counting? To me, this is something I feel is the hardest to dismiss. BC (before Christ) and AD (after death) are referring to Christ's death on the cross. It was so significant that people began counting years after it. I know people are beginning to just ignore it and are even trying to change it (or has it already changed?), but still, you can't just ignore its origins. I acknowledge that almost 2008 years ago, a man names Christ Jesus (with variating translations) died on the cross. The only way you can dismiss this (as I did before I became a believer) is to think that "yeah, a man named Jesus lived and was killed, but he wasn't special."

That would be human sexual reproduction. I can't say I know for sure, but I am sure that asexual reproductive organisms don't combine two cells, especially when they themselves are one cell.

Genders, defined by male, female, hermaphrodite, or none at all (can't think of the name), are something I'm interested in.

Sexual reproduction, the process in which an organism or organisms create more of the said organism, is something I'm not interested in.

Lyston in the OP writes:But here's where we run into a snag. When does the self replicating stop? If something mutates into something that can't self replicate, what happens? Something turns into a guy and is ready to start the mating process... but he has no mate. He's a mutation, a rare mutation that happens every so often.Evolution tells us that not only did something evolve into a guy, but at the SAME time and SAME place, a thing of the SAME species evolved into an organism that perfectly matched as an opposite of the male, aka a female.

How did it start becoming a male or female?

This is not an evolution thread?

Who is Jeebus, and when did I bring his pals into my thread?

Lyston is interested in the evolutionary explanation for the origin of the two sexes, what we would normally call sexual reproduction.

Maybe it could be seen better as I'm interested in the creation organs that make up a gender. How did something (that is either a hermaphrodite or something else) start to form the separate organs penis and vagina? How did it start becoming a male or female?

Quetzal in Message 33 writes:The origin and maintenance of sexual reproduction is an area of active research. That means that the question has not been satisfactorily answered as yet (i.e., no concensus has developed). One of the problems is that sexual reproduction - or something resembling it - apparently evolved way down at the base of the organismal tree. For instance there are several haloarchea (eg., Halorubrum) which use recombination - i.e., sexual reproduction - in the full sense of the word. There are also several single-celled eukaryotes that also use actual recombination (such as Plasmodium) during reproduction. Finally, in one sense bacterial conjugation - where genetic material is transferred between one type of bacteria and another via an exchange of plasmids - can be considered a different form of “sexual reproduction” that evolved in a completely different domain of life. In other words, not only is sexual reproduction not limited to modern multi-celled organisms, but it apparently started evolving very shortly after life itself appeared. So how did all the hanky-panky get started? There are several reasonable hypotheses (Catholic Scientist provided a wiki quote covering a number of them way back in message 5 - to which I notice you didn’t bother to reply). In general, the hypotheses can be divided into genetic and ecological explanations. CS’s wiki quote covered most of the genetic ones - if you have any questions on those, I’ll try and answer them although I’m far from an expert in genetics.I personally prefer the ecological approach. Not, I hasten to add, because the answer is intrinsically better than the more purely genetic approaches, but rather because from training and experience I have a tendency (my friends sometimes say “a purblind determination” ) to view most questions in biology in that light. The most compelling of these explanations derive from an application of what is known as the Red Queen Hypothesis (with a tip o’ the hat to Matt Ridley, who first applied the term from its broader meaning to the specific case of sexual reproduction). For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, it derives from Louis Carroll’s wonderful book Through the Looking Glass, where Alice met the Red Queen who said, “In here, it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.” In essence, it is a description of the co-evolutionary arms race between a predator and its prey (or a parasite and its host). In this race, the key selection pressure on each population is its counterpart in the relationship. Simplistically, as a f’rinstance, as a predator becomes more successful in catching and killing it’s prey, the prey population may suffer a decline to a point where rare individuals with a more effective strategy or physical ability to escape come to predominate (i.e., the population is said to have adapted to the new capability of its predator), thus leading to a decline in the predator population until a more successful strategy or physical ability comes to predominate, and so the cycle begins anew. Obviously there are limitations on how far this co-evolution can continue, primarily because the predator-prey relationship isn’t the only selection pressure on the two populations. Eventually something resembling an equilibrium is likely to develop, although there will continue to be fluctuations around this equilibrium.One of the really interesting aspects of the Red Queen, and how I see it applying to the evolution of sex, is the parasite-host relationship (this isn’t the hypothesis’ only possible application to the question, but I think it is one of the easiest to illustrate, and has the advantage of having some good studies to back it up). Take a hypothetical population of clonal organisms with genotype A. If a parasite manages to infect this genotype, it will by definition be able to infect every single individual carrying the genotype. Because they’re clonal, the only thing the organisms in this case can do is to wait for the really rare beneficial mutation to appear in its lineage. Since the particular mutation may or may not appear, the population may be doomed to extinction. Let’s say the mutation DID appear, creating genotype B for instance, now we have type A in serious decline due to its parasite load in comparison to B (which for the moment is running around parasite-free). As A declines, its parasite also declines, creating selection pressure for it to adapt to the now dominant type B. If/when it does, B starts declining, A is already infected and in decline, so the clones have to come up with a genotype C, putting pressure on the parasite to adapt to C, and the Red Queen rollercoaster is well and truly underway.Now, what happens if our host population is capable of throwing up variation much faster than the parasite can? Maybe even in a single generation? Well, the parasite is now in serious trouble. This is what recombination through sexual reproduction does. It is a much faster way of creating variation than waiting around for a lucky mutation. Beginning with a simple exchange of genetic material (i.e., as in bacterial combination), as organisms and their parasites got more complex - and the inter-relations between them got more complex - the Red Queen refined the simple exchange of genetic material into something more closely resembling actual sexual reproduction. From there, it’s only a matter of continuing to refine this adaptation to where in some species we now have two genders.

I just wanted a plausible theory on genders, not sexual reproduction.

I remember from a 7th grade video of single celled bacterium sending out a tentacle-like thing to another bacteria cell and transferring its DNA to it.

There is no way to tell what the first organism was, in my opinion. Maybe there is, so could someone explain that to me?

You tell me not to call Evolution a theory, but on the contrary, is it not called the Theory of Evolution?

You tell me not to call it "just a theory" ...

... (which I haven't), but in truth it would have to be "it's just some theories".

I understand that this is a field under study currently, but how can "all the evidence that supports the origins of this topic" be divided into not one, but three (four total mentioned) theories.

Dare I say you're splitting hairs?

Yes, the sexes, not sexual reproduction nor asexual reproduction.

To me, your definition sounds more like "gender stereotyping" (roughly the same as Gender Roles), something that we discussed in my psychology class.

They define it as the "cultural or behavioral traits a society associates with ones gender"

sex: the feminine gender.

2 a: sex b: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex

Gender, in common usage, refers to the differences between men and women.

Sex refers to the male and female duality of biology and reproduction.

Anyway, by definition not found by you, this thread is supposed to be about genders.

By definition, it also is about the sexes.

I read them. I'll sum them up real quick: (1) a cell tried to repair damaged DNA by copying another's. (2) Parasite infected a cell and spread its DNA. (3) A cell tried to eat a cell, but instead copied its DNA (or something close to that).

Evidence for the Evolution of Bdelloid Rotifers Without Sexual Reproduction or Genetic ExchangeDavid Mark Welch, Matthew MeselsonThe Class Bdelloidea of the Phylum Rotifera is the largest metazoan taxon in which males, hermaphrodites, and meiosis are unknown. We conducted a molecular genetic test of this indication that bdelloid rotifers may have evolved without sexual reproduction or genetic exchange. The test is based on the expectation that after millions of years without these processes, genomes will no longer contain pairs of closely similar haplotypes and instead will contain highly divergent descendants of formerly allelic nucleotide sequences. We find that genomes of individual bdelloid rotifers, representing four different species, appear to lack pairs of closely similar sequences and contain representatives of two ancient lineages that began to diverge before the bdelloid radiation many millions of years ago when sexual reproduction and genetic exchange may have ceased.

And, how are you sure that things didn't start out with sexual reproduction and asexual was a mutation?

I suggest then that we move on past the arguing over the word "theory" or discussions over whether "sex" or "gender" is more appropriate for the discussion. ... So let's try to move back to where we've been making good progress - the actual mechanisms of evolution, and specifically scenarios by which sexual reproduction could have arisen.

That makes a bit more sense then. The Theory of Evolution is very specific in its scope, and it's pretty broad. The theories you mention here (and I'd probably call them hypotheses myself, but that's me) are far less general and deal with the evolution of a specific feature.

I know its off topic, but do you guess think that the first organisms were simpler than bacteria, like viruses?

Laboratory experiments suggest that RNA could have replicated itself and carried out the other functions required to keep a primitive cell alive.Only after life passed through this "RNA world," many scientists now agree, did it take on a more familiar cast. Proteins are thousands of times more efficient as a catalyst than RNA is, and so once they emerged they would have been favored by natural selection. Likewise, genetic information can be replicated from DNA with far fewer errors than it can from RNA.

wiki writes:(There are) bacterial species such as Rickettsia and Chlamydia, that are considered living organisms, but are unable to reproduce outside a host cell.