Read Online Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy by Melvin Konner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Melvin Konner
Ads: Link
twice.
Evolve as you will, your predators are evolving, too. You get faster, they get faster—you’d better get even faster right away. You get tougher skin, they get sharper teeth. You get toxins, they get fancier guts. You get camouflage, they get color vision. You get bigger, they unhinge their ominous jaws. To respond, you need gobs of variation. You need DNA to spare, genes on hold that you aren’t using yet but may need for a rainy day. And all this running-to-stay-in-place has not even hit critical. It matters most when we switchfrom the predators that gobble you up honestly from the outside to the ones that nibble at you insidiously from within.
These are the micropredators—parasites, viruses, germs. And here is what they want from you: no change whatsoever. It takes them long enough to adapt to one individual. Once they’ve done it, Basta! They don’t want any more challenges. Suppose Mike (microorganism) X evolves inside one of your daughters and she fights it off with immune cells until she’s 99 percent free of Mike’s progeny. But they have a population doubling time of, what, fifteen minutes? They are back in nothing flat with a new, resistant strain. So she kills off 90 percent of them. But then . . . well, you get the idea. It’s why you’re taking a different antibiotic now than you did five years ago.
The thing is, if you’ve reproduced without sex—just cloned yourself—Mike X only has to solve this puzzle once. Ultimately immunity depends on genes. And if you have dozens or thousands of genetically copied sisters, he or she or it has already evolved around what any of them can do. Likewise your mother, daughters, nieces, granddaughters—all are vulnerable. The Red Queen says, Check. And then: Checkmate .
But suppose you export some copies of your precious genes into a class of offspring that will never themselves reproduce. Keep doing that for enough generations for mutations to make a difference. Now take one of that nonreproducing type—a.k.a. males—and put some of his somewhat different genes together with some of yours. Mix vigorously and simmer. You have found a recipe to make Mike X miserable, a way to resist the Red Queen move after move after move.
The only real drawback is, now you have to put up with Mike Y, who’s not a microorganism at all. He’s a nonreproductive member of your species who carries a pretty pathetic-looking Y chromosome. He’s not exactly a predator, although he does have something in common with predators. He won’t eat you—his destiny is in your hands, or at least your inner organs. Under certain circumstances, you may eat him, but first you need to collect his wayward genes,so unless you have other options, you won’t feast on him until after you’re almost finished mating. He’s a member of your own species, sort of. But his chromosomes differ from yours, enough to accord you a new sort of protection.
So, all along you’ve thought that germs come from sex?
Not so. In evolution, sex comes from germs.
The black widow spider and the praying mantis have found a way to have their males and eat them, too. They carry the sperm-donor concept much further than even the most feckless Don Juan. Females accept the gift of sperm, then have the rest of the male for dessert. But it’s not just the melodrama of sexual cannibalism that draws us toward the mantis’s prayerful pose or the widow’s web. It’s that these species, like the virgin whiptails and Grandpa Darwin’s wanton blossoms, are vital scientific anchor points in the web we weave to catch the mystery of sex.
The black widow lives in a broad stripe circling the planet, pursuing her venomous trade in all but the coldest climates. She is starkly beautiful, about the size of a raisin sitting on eight long legs, her shiny black shell bearing a distinctive reddish hourglass or studded with two red-orange spots laced with a partial white trim, as if her back were bejeweled with bright, flat
Evolve as you will, your predators are evolving, too. You get faster, they get faster—you’d better get even faster right away. You get tougher skin, they get sharper teeth. You get toxins, they get fancier guts. You get camouflage, they get color vision. You get bigger, they unhinge their ominous jaws. To respond, you need gobs of variation. You need DNA to spare, genes on hold that you aren’t using yet but may need for a rainy day. And all this running-to-stay-in-place has not even hit critical. It matters most when we switchfrom the predators that gobble you up honestly from the outside to the ones that nibble at you insidiously from within.
These are the micropredators—parasites, viruses, germs. And here is what they want from you: no change whatsoever. It takes them long enough to adapt to one individual. Once they’ve done it, Basta! They don’t want any more challenges. Suppose Mike (microorganism) X evolves inside one of your daughters and she fights it off with immune cells until she’s 99 percent free of Mike’s progeny. But they have a population doubling time of, what, fifteen minutes? They are back in nothing flat with a new, resistant strain. So she kills off 90 percent of them. But then . . . well, you get the idea. It’s why you’re taking a different antibiotic now than you did five years ago.
The thing is, if you’ve reproduced without sex—just cloned yourself—Mike X only has to solve this puzzle once. Ultimately immunity depends on genes. And if you have dozens or thousands of genetically copied sisters, he or she or it has already evolved around what any of them can do. Likewise your mother, daughters, nieces, granddaughters—all are vulnerable. The Red Queen says, Check. And then: Checkmate .
But suppose you export some copies of your precious genes into a class of offspring that will never themselves reproduce. Keep doing that for enough generations for mutations to make a difference. Now take one of that nonreproducing type—a.k.a. males—and put some of his somewhat different genes together with some of yours. Mix vigorously and simmer. You have found a recipe to make Mike X miserable, a way to resist the Red Queen move after move after move.
The only real drawback is, now you have to put up with Mike Y, who’s not a microorganism at all. He’s a nonreproductive member of your species who carries a pretty pathetic-looking Y chromosome. He’s not exactly a predator, although he does have something in common with predators. He won’t eat you—his destiny is in your hands, or at least your inner organs. Under certain circumstances, you may eat him, but first you need to collect his wayward genes,so unless you have other options, you won’t feast on him until after you’re almost finished mating. He’s a member of your own species, sort of. But his chromosomes differ from yours, enough to accord you a new sort of protection.
So, all along you’ve thought that germs come from sex?
Not so. In evolution, sex comes from germs.
The black widow spider and the praying mantis have found a way to have their males and eat them, too. They carry the sperm-donor concept much further than even the most feckless Don Juan. Females accept the gift of sperm, then have the rest of the male for dessert. But it’s not just the melodrama of sexual cannibalism that draws us toward the mantis’s prayerful pose or the widow’s web. It’s that these species, like the virgin whiptails and Grandpa Darwin’s wanton blossoms, are vital scientific anchor points in the web we weave to catch the mystery of sex.
The black widow lives in a broad stripe circling the planet, pursuing her venomous trade in all but the coldest climates. She is starkly beautiful, about the size of a raisin sitting on eight long legs, her shiny black shell bearing a distinctive reddish hourglass or studded with two red-orange spots laced with a partial white trim, as if her back were bejeweled with bright, flat
Similar Books
