Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution Lab. Think about it: a sexually produced individual gets half their genes from each parent. An asexually produced individual gets all of their genes from one parent.
From the point of view of the parent, asexual reproduction would seem to be the best way to go. Why, then, does the vast majority of multicellular life on earth reproduce sexually, especially since asexual reproduction evolved first and would appear to be more efficient? One explanation is genetic diversity. Sex is basically a way for species to develop new combinations of genes that allow advantageous genes to propagate while filtering out potentially disadvantageous ones.
Such genetic diversity makes a population more robust to parasites and diseases and other environmental factors that might otherwise wipe them out. And this benefit is certainly great enough to counteract the individual cost of diluting your genome via sex. Sex is nearly ubiquitous in multicellular life forms, and once a species has evolved sex, it very rarely goes back.
So when we come across a population that does go back, it provides a unique opportunity to investigate how and why sex evolved in the first place.
One such population has captivated BEE lab researchers for years β a mysterious population of honey bees found only in the Western Cape of South Africa.
