Mother Nature can really be kinky. She’s is far from PG-rated. Can you imagine anything weirder than having both “genders” housed in the same individual? A new science magazine, Sequencer, talks about one example. I hope you’re sitting down for this.
Props to Dan Samorodnitsky
Dan and three other, equally brilliant young science writers have just launched Sequencer Magazine, their own digital science magazine.
Dan’s first article really got my attention: Alpine flower resolves sexual conflict through spacetime manipulation.
What? Alpine flowers experience sexual conflict?
Yup. If you hadn’t realized that before – well, now you do.
Although Dan claims he didn’t do well in botany in school, his article is evidence that he’s made up quite a bit of ground.
His article points to a pretty common ‘situation’ in biology – i.e., sexual conflict is the norm.
Indeed, sexual conflict goes right to the heart of evolutionary biology.
Nothing like this came up in my 6th grade sex education class. The teacher, Mrs. Baldwin, was apparently limited to relying on cartoons of fallopian tubes, swimming sperm cells, and the like.
This is some of what we missed…
It’s Just Basic Biology
One of the core premises of evolution is misleadingly stated as, “Survival of the fittest.”
It should be more accurately described as, “Let’s reproduce more than the next guy/gal.”
In more jargony terms, scientists like me refer to it as, “Differential reproduction of genotypes.”
In other words, the winners arising from sexual conflict simply produce more offspring.
The better to get more of their genes into the next generation.
The two references at the end of this post give you a better idea of how sexual selection rules the roost. Although they focus on plants, the principles espoused in these two papers apply to all kingdoms of life.
Plants, animals, bacteria (Archaea AND Eubacteria), and a slew of other kingdoms you probably never heard of. (Based on genetic analyses, we can now distinguish up to 13 different kingdoms of life now.)
If we just look at plants, we find a dizzying array of strategies. In the case of those alpine flowers, the strategy is to have the ‘female’ flowering parts (pistils) mature ahead of the ‘male’ flowering parts (stamens).
The johnnie-come-lately males have to go elsewhere to spread their genes around.
It’s a way to keep flowers from self-pollinating.
Why is that important, you may ask?
To explain with a better-known example, it’s the equivalent reducing the possibility for genetic oddities, as happened due to inbreeding in the House of Habsburg.
Inbreeding is a no-no, because it reduces genetic variability. One result is to perpetuate gene combinations that would otherwise be ‘hidden’ by more vigorous permutations.
Apparently the Habsburgs didn’t know about all the health issues arising from the inbreeding that characterized so many Egyptian pharaohs. The brother-sister marriage between the deities, Osiris and Isis, was apparently a blueprint for keeping royal lines ‘pure’.
You all heard about that in your sex education classes, too, right? I thought not.
As you can probably guess, focusing on one species (humans) is pretty narrow, considering all the other organisms on Earth.
A Smattering of Other ‘Oddities’
SIDENOTE: My fellow botanists will notice I’m playing fast and loose with common terminology here. As we all know, pollen-producing plants are not really “male” and pistil (seed)-producing plants are not really “female.” Athough you can theoretically plant a “male” mulberry, there’s really no such thing. Explaining why this is the case would require a deep dive into plant sexual reproduction, which I’ll skip for now. (You’re welcome.)
If you’re waiting for the kinky stuff – well, there’s too much to cover.
I’ll just say for now that ‘transgender’ biology is pretty common.
Biologists don’t use that term, though. Nor do we use ‘gender dysphorea’ either. One preferred term is ‘sequential hermaphrodite’.
In clown fish, for example, when a female in a group dies, a male steps up and becomes the new female. She then selects the largest male in her group as her breeding partner.
During incubation, bearded dragons can switch from male to female when the temperature gets too warm.
Snails and earthworms possess both male and female reproductive organs. It allows them to switch genders as needed. (It does present the possibility for self-fertilization, which can happen.)
In hawkfish, when a population has too many females, the largest females becomes male.
When it comes to sexual reproductive strategies, though, plants are all over the map.
Mostly they entail how to get pollen from stamens in one flower to pistils in another. Sometimes pistils on the same plant, and sometimes on other plants. In the extreme, plants like mulberries don’t even have pistils and stamens on the same individual. (Thus, ‘male’ and ‘female’.)
Sacrificing Sexual Conflict for Speed
Amazon women are not the only organisms who don’t need males.
The Desert Grassland Whiptail lizard is an all-female species distributed from Arizona to Texas and adjacent Mexico. They reproduce by parthenogenesis, meaning they hatch babies without being fertilized. They simply don’t take the time to do the sexual thing.
The speediest reproducers, however, are generally weeds. Some species, such as dandelions, are almost exclusively clones. Hardly any sexual reproduction at all.
Ditto for aspens. Any aspen forest you come upon is almost certainly a massive clone. Since individuals sprout from connected underground parts, they have the same exact genes in every tree!
In fact, one interesting irony I’ve realized involves cultivated roses. In spite of their value for (human) romance, they are completely sterile. Every rose you see at the florist’s comes from a cutting – i.e., a clone.
Humans have a habit of growing cuttings of plants for the purpose of eliminating genetic diversity. It stops evolution in its tracks.
Bananas, navel oranges, Granny Smith apples, and Hass avocados are just right for our purposes. We don’t want any stinkin’ genetic diversity messing them up.
Of course, elimination of genetic diversity puts all such clones at risk for being wiped by a single disease. (Bananas are particularly at risk right now due to a fungal infection called Fusarium wilt tropical race 4 (TR4).)
Okay…now I’m beginning to digress.
I’ve made my main point, though.
When it comes to how we humans view sexual weirdnesses, we’ve got a lot to learn.
Comments or Questions?
I’d love to hear from you. This and every other post here provides a comment section at the end of the post, exactly for that purpose.
So, by all means, leave me your thoughts.
I promise I’ll respond in real English, not ‘science’ (at least not TOO much!).
I would be especially grateful if you point out any flaws in my logic, factual errors, or ordinary typos. (I’ll give you a little ‘huzzah’ in my heart.)
Then I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
References
Barrett S. C. (2010). Darwin’s legacy: the forms, function and sexual diversity of flowers. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 365(1539), 351–368. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0212
Haghighatnia, Mohammadjavad et al. “Darwin’s ‘mystery of mysteries’: the role of sexual selection in plant speciation.” Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society vol. 98,6 (2023): 1928-1944. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12991
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