I don't think that fiddling with sex ratios would be evolutionarily stable. When dealing with a conventional sexual system, the male-female ratio is 50-50 for a simple reason. Imagine a system with 90% females and 10% males. That means that, on average, males will have 9 times more offspring than females...which means there is an incredible selective pressure to be male, since males have much much higher fitness. The same thing happens if the ratios are reversed. The only time skewed sex ratios are evolutionarily stable is when it takes more resources to produce members of either sex. If males require 10 times more parental investment, then we might expect fewer males. The ESS would be to invest equal resources in both sexes. If both sexes require equal resources, then the ratio should be ~50-50. So, I imagine that the ratio of vars to males is 50-50. On Stratos, sexually created children should have the same sex ratios as on Earth...males are just another form of var. Females are only more common on Stratos because of asexual reproduction. The ratio of clones to vars/males could vary depending on all kinds of factors. The one problem I see with this set-up is that I don't see how males benefit evolutionarily from sparking asexual reproduction. I would imagine that males would become more and more indifferent to sparking...which means fewer and fewer clones until we're back to normal sexual reproduction. The other problem would be if cloning didn't require sparking...but then we'd lose clone groups until eventually only one was left...and that one would probably face extinction very soon, geologically speaking. This is the pattern with the asexual lizard species. An individual mutant from a sexual species becomes asexual and thrives, forming a new species (since it is reproductively isolated). But that species is not as robust as the sexual species around it, and eventually becomes extinct. So, the pattern on Stratos is definately superior, since it allows for both sexual and asexual reproduction. I'm just worried that it isn't evolutionarily stable. ===== Darryl Think Galactically -- Act Terrestrially __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/
