Sex car?
Sex is power adapted Karin Hollricher in Bild der Wissenschaft issue 07/2006 Why sex? Because it's fun? While that's true, it's not a scientific explanation for why nature invented something as complicated as sex. Some researchers are convinced that the natural search for diversity is behind the wild activity. Because sexually produced offspring, which are the product of two genetically different individuals, have the chance to be genetically better adapted to the environment than their parents. But: Bacteria that multiply by simple cell division produce offspring much faster. Animals that reproduce unisexually, such as aphids, are also more fixated than those that first have to find a partner. So is diversity more important than speed? What is certain is that nature invented sex about two billion years ago. Evolutionary biologists, geneticists, ecologists, and many other scientists have long debated why. The science author Christian Göldenboog presents the most common attempts at interpretation in conversations with the geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the cell biologist Kim Nasmyth and the late evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith. The latest theories are based on new insights into the production and fusion of the egg and sperm. Göldenboog describes it verbosely, but a few explanatory illustrations would certainly have done the complex matter good. After the last line of the humorously spiced book, you will definitely be amazed at how complicated the most important thing in the world is...
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