BIOL359 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Horizontal Gene Transfer, Red Queen Hypothesis
14 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Sex is the driving behavior that drives evolution. Lizard that has only female population (genetic clone daughters) Sex takes energy, effort and time but is advantageous in that its mean of transferring genes to offspring. Fish in a pool were affected by parasites that were parasitizing only asexual fish and not their counter-part sexuals. Later when a drought hit, the sexual fish were parasitized and not the asexuals. This is an example of the red queen hypothesis--- an evolutionary race where an organisms evolves yet it is staying in its place and racing the co-evolving parasite. The moment a species does not evolve it becomes doomed. Solution to this problem was, reintroduce fish from a nearby pool (genetic rescue) and allow for mating among generations. The parasite pattern has returned back to affect the asexuals. The sex has allowed for introduction of variability among species members.
