Reproduction In The Trail Of Life

Reproductive monogamy is defined as an exclusive sexual relationship between a female and a male based on their sexual interactions. Social Monogamy refers to male and female’s social living arrangement without sexual interactions. It refers to the living patterns, raising offsprings, and obtaining food. Monogamy is common in birds, but also occurs in invertebrates. Why would a male mammal choose to mate with one female when he can mate with more than one? Why would the male stay around instead of finding another female to live with? Many researchers have attempted to answer this question of why some mammals prefer monogamy over polygamy. Vole rats, one of the species that perform monogamous mating, demonstrate pair boding. Male and female pairs of vole rats have been observed together over several months, and the males stay with females even when the female is not reproductively active. A typical vole family in the wild is almost always consisted of one male, one female, and their offspring. In addition, unlike other species in which females are the only ones taking care of the offspring, vole rats share parental roles and even build nests together. Because they show these monogamous behaviors, they have served as a good species/model to learn about monogamy for neuroscientists. In this paper, monogamy, specifically in vole rats, will be explained along with its proximate and ultimate causes of this adaptation.

have probably heard the term “survival of the fittest,” but if an organism is not able to also grow and reproduce,

Charlene Forest is an associate professor in the Biology department at Brooklyn College, who dedicates her research in to trying to understand the mechanism behind the process of fertilization in algae, as well as what controls expression of gamete-specific genes. To do so, she must understand how sperm and egg gametes first recognize and then fuse with each other. Thus, in order to find what causes the fusion of these gametes, Forest’s lab is cloning genes that prevent the fusion of sperm and egg gametes. She hopes that her research on the fertilization process in algae will help understand the fertilization process in other organisms, particularly humans.

The majority of species of penguin are monogamous, usually returning to the same mate during breeding seasons for many years in a row.

Judson contributes to onefs understanding of sex among different organisms in that she makes difficult concepts simple to comprehend. Although she uses scientific terminology, she limits it so that anyone can understand the technical information she shares. Judson also describes the types of environments in which each species and

Nick Lane’s book, Life Ascending; The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, published in 2009, is an excellent piece that brings together various elements of life itself, such as, DNA, photosynthesis and complex cells. However this critique will be based on Chapter 5 of his renown book; Sex – The Greatest Lottery on Earth. Dr Nick Lane is a biochemist who has won several awards for the research of evolutionary science he has completed and is known as one of the founding members of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research. Each of his four books released were a huge success and he is still respected for his work and research. All in all, Lane is considered as a source that is reputable and it is safe to say that his current book being

They based their study on the animals’ DNA and to provide evidence that sexual selection acts more strongly on females than on males. They collected Gulf pipefish from the Atlantic coast of Florida. To test monogamy, female pipefish were constrained to mate with a maximum of four males. As a result, much evidence was found to indicate that females experience stronger sexual selection than males in the population of Gulf pipefish. The average number of mates per female was about two while the number of mates per male was exactly one. This evidence is described as polyandry, which in this case produces stronger sexual selection for females. The variance of female mating success was seven times higher than male mating success. The only downfall for this experiment was that some male pipefish that had been collected may had recently given birth and may have been preparing their brood for a succeeding pregnancy. It was also found that mating females were larger in size and more embellished than average, concluding that males may prefer to mate with larger and more embellished females. In conclusion, the Gulf pipefish appears to have an extreme form of polyandry and it is supported that females have a far stringer sexual

The ASR, for example, is population-specific but its effects underscore the pervasive and recurring issue of sexual conflict. In Rossmanith (2006), male-biased ASR was correlated with increased occurrence of polyandry in the lesser spotted woodpecker (Picoides minor). In song sparrows (Melospiza melodia), males were monogamous at times when there was an excess of males, but were inclined to polygyny with the materialization of female-biased ASR. Liker (2014) summarized that polygamy by males is much more frequent with female-biased ASR than with male-biased ASR, whereas polygamy by females is more common at male-biased ASR. The favorable sex subsequently pursues auspicious mating opportunities and can desert their mate, often to re-nest with a new mate (Pilastro

An example of the monogamous system is gibbons. Monogamous system consists of one male and one female join to rear at least a single brood. There is little opportunity to form relationship besides the one with the mate, so

The origin of life is indeed a fascinating mystery and is something that Davies explores in his article, "The Origin of Life: When and Where Did it Begin?" Davies begins his article by acknowledging that for a long time, more scientists attributed the beginning of life on earth as having evolved billions of years ago in a "primordial soup" at an unknown place on the surface of the earth. This has long been the assumption of scientists and one which has long gone unquestioned. However, Davies points to the mounting evidence that life in fact may have begun elsewhere at a location deep beneath the surface of the earth, such as adjacent to a volcanic ocean vent or perhaps within the earth's hot crust. As Davies immediately poses in his article, "Since there are hints that life's history on Earth extends back through the phase of massive cosmic bombardment, it may be that life started on Mars and came here later, perhaps inside rocks ejected from the Red Planet by large impacts" (2001). Davies aptly points out that the movement of integral and unbroken rocks between Mars and Earth is an unquestioned fact, and that various experiments have in fact verified that microbes could have lasted through an odyssey via space if they were in fact cushioned in such material (2001). If, as Davies illuminates, this is in fact the way that life on earth started, through some sort of planetary cross-contamination, then the likelihood of discovering another

The article Models of speciation by sexual selection on polygen by Russell Lande discusses the reasoning behind natural and sexual selection. Russell Lande starts by describing the differences between the processes of natural and sexual selection according to Darwin’s theory of evolution and continues on to question the reasoning for why females prefer extreme phenotypic traits in a polygamous mating system, which is not explained in Darwin’s studies. Russell defined a polygamous mating system as a system in which the male provides little more than gametes in their offspring to the relationships. When this is the case the females have many potential mates and when there is no sexual preference a preference can evolve. This happens because a

Mate choice is a product of mate preferences form in the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness (EEA). Sexual selection suggests that females prefer males who they can gain benefits from such as gifts. This is shown in male birds who make nests for females in order to mate with them and also in insects who give nuptial gifts.

Two fundamental principals are capable of explaining the entire field of biology and it can be said that every living organism operates by these two principals. Whether it be the most basic single celled prokaryotes who dwell in the boiling hot waters of hydrothermal vents or the most highly evolved of the animal kingdom, Homo sapiens, whose brain is so complex that it seems to exist almost as a microcosm of our own universe, all are driven by the same two motivations. First, and by far the most important, is sex. Everything must have sex. Reproduction, whether sexual or asexual, and procreation are the highest priorities of any organism and the continued existence of life on this Earth depends upon on this achievement. Secondly, and significantly less important than reproduction is survival. It may seem humorous to entertain the idea that a sexual (or asexual) experience could possibly be of greater concern to an organism than the preservation of its own life, but it is not entirely absurd. Only completion of the former allows for a species, and essentially life as a whole, to progress and evolve, while completion of the latter does not. Survival without reproduction has no purpose. Indeed, it could be argued that longevity serves the only purpose of facilitating the occurrence of more reproductive opportunities before the inevitable death of the organism.

(1999) have shown how the rate of mutational supply frequently will not limit the rates of adaptation. Adaptation could be limited by the rate of that beneficial mutations can be fixed in large populations with abundant advantageous mutations available (Colegrave and Collins 2008). Advantageous mutations that are derived in different lineages compete with one another in asexual populations, and cannot be fixed together (Gerrish and Lenski 1998). This is known as clonal interference and may be a significant limit to the rate of adaptation in asexual populations. Syngamy and meiosis, parts of the eukaryotic sexual cycle, allow for advantageous mutations to arise in different lineages to be combined into the same individual (Colegrave and Collins 2008). This may circumvent the problem of clonal interference while increasing the effectiveness of selection. The mechanisms of syngamy and meiosis seem to be designed to increase variation of the offspring. In the past the purpose of sex was to increase the ability of a species to evolve was accepted with without question (Colegrave and Collins 2008); however, more recently this explanation has been questioned due to the expected costs of sex on the individual outweighing the benefits to the species (Colegrave and Collins 2008). With that said, Charlesworth and Barton (1996) proposed genetic modifiers for sex had a correlation with the rate of adaptation: an increase

Intersexual selection describes one sex (commonly females) choosing male partners for copulation. Females tend to choose the males based on secondary sexual characteristics. Intrasexual selection, on the other hand, is competition within the same sex, in the hope of gaining access to the other sex for reproduction (Eberhard, 1996). It is commonly male species competing against each other for female partners. These two forms of sexual selection results in more developed offspring, as the fitter male will out-compete other males and also is more likely to be chosen be