Friday, April 9, 2010

Does promiscuity prevent extinction?

Does promiscuity prevent extinction?

In a study conducted in fruit flies, it took only nine generations for the extremely detrimental effect of monogamy to cause 5/12 forced-monogamy fly lines to go extinct.

Sperm competition, it seems, may serve as a mechanism for females to help the species avoid extinction, not only by increasing the genetic diversity, but specifically by weeding out the deleterious allele.

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