I'm trying not to spend much time writing to cf-community while I finish this project, but misconceptions on evolution tend to draw me out anyway...
A common misconception is that homosexuality is evolutionarily maladaptive. That misconception tends to come from a simplistic view of evolution. One would think that an exclusively homosexual man would never have sex with a woman, therefore never produce, therefore not pass along his genes. That seems reasonable but evolution (in the form of natural selection) tends to be more complicated than that. The term that evolutionary biologists use to talk about how natural selection works is "fitness". But fitness isn't as simple as having a baby that successfully grows up before you die. Natural selection would seem to operate at the level of the individual (if you are infertile, you don't reproduce) but in actuality it is happening down at the level of your genes. You as an individual are a collection of genes and their expression. Blue eyes versus green eyes, tall versus short, fertile versus infertile, etc. Whether or not you live, thrive and reproduce is based not on a single gene but rather on the collection of genes that makes up individual you. I share many genes with you but obviously some of them are different. Those differences may account for some of the differences in survival rate, reproduction rate, etc between you and I. But the point is is that the survival of any particular gene into future generations is based more on broad statistical measures and how that gene gets along with other dominant genes rather than the success or failure of any individual. An extreme example of how non-reproductive strategies are not necessarily maladaptive is the so-called "social" animals, like termites. A termite mound generally only has one female out of the hundreds of thousands that reproduces. The Queen has all the offspring and every single other female in the mound will help take care of all those offspring but not actually produce any of her own. So is the queen termite the only one that has any sort of evolutionary fitness? Not at all. In a curiosity of their genetics which I won't go into, a non-queen female termite in the mound shares, on average, 3/4's of her genes with the Queen. Since both the queen and the non-queen came from the same mother (the previous queen) you'd expect them to share 50% of their genes in common, but in this animal its actually 3/4ths. Now as a result of this it means that it is an effective evolutionary strategy to have individual females not reproduce on their own but rather help out the Queen. Why is that? Well, if they had offspring of their own, they'd have, on average, 50% of their genes represented in any given offspring. But they are still going to have 50% of their genes represented in the offspring of the Queen due to the fact that the Queen has a 75% overlap between her genome and the individual female's genome. So in terms of carrying on the gene's (which is where evolution really happens), it is a winning strategy to help out (be social) rather than have offspring themselves. This is all glossing over the subject of course, but the basic point I'm making is that a gay couple does not have to have children in order to pass their genes along. I share, on average, 25% of my genes with my sister. Even if I never had any children, if she has children, a not insubstantial portion of my genome gets carried on into the next generation. Add in the fact that many heritable (able to be passed on) traits are linked with other traits and therefore get passed on together or not at all and you can start finding lots of scenarios where a set of genes for homosexuality would not likely see heavy natural selection. And then, of course, who is to say that our social customs ought to be bound by biology? But that is an argument for a whole 'nother email after I get this project finished... Judah ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:280766 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
