Asexual to sexual reproduction? How?

This complaint seems unfair when brought against a response to an opening post containing the statement: "I made this up, but it makes a little sense".There is room in science for 'imaginative ideas'. Another way to refer to these is: 'logical propositions'. Your opening post was itself essentially a series of such logical propositions, each presented as a rather loosely bounded (and somewhat familiar) thought experiment, in the form of a request to imagine a set of circumstances, followed by the pointing out of an apparent logical difficulty encountered as a result.When Mr. Jack (quite generously, I thought) offers to play along, you reject his contribution as lacking in empirical support. Even more so than the complete failure of their arguments, it is disingenuous tactics like this that earned creationists such a poor reputation in the scientific community.

I thought it was the "Red Queen Hypothesis", actually, but, yes. In fact, I'm just now reading Matt (aka "not Mark") Ridley's book, The Red Queen. (Last week, I read Mark (aka "not Matt") Ridley's, The Cooperative Gene, which makes a fairly convincing argument for sexual reproduction as an error-correcting mechanism).But I'm still fuzzy on who exactly it was that first invoked the Red Queen metaphor. Wasn't it Leigh Van Valen?Aphids are fascinating. Basically born pregnant like the tribbles in the old Star Trek episode, aren't they? Anyone ever looked at exploiting them as a food source?ETA: tags, but while I'm at it, "ready to breed" would have been better than "pregnant", I suppose.This message has been edited by Cal, 09-22-2005 03:49 PMThis message has been edited by Cal, 09-23-2005 09:22 AM

Speaking of food sources, in some gall midges, the larvae are not only able to produce larvae parthenogenically (without fertilization) and paedogenetically (before they reach adult stage), but while they're at it, they consume their mother from the inside out.