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Asexuality's evolutionary role?


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I'm not sure if this is where this thread belongs, but any way...

 I found this ted talk. It's fascinating if you have time to watch it. If not, the just of it is that according to research, the genes which create homosexual males are also linked to the genes which make you good at helping everyone get along with each other. Therefore, being gay is important to survival because gay guys help the family unit function and survive. There hasn't been any research done yet into what evolutionary purpose other LGBTQ+ identities serve, but I'm curious what your thoughts are on this video and also on what you think the evolutionary purpose of asexuals might be. (The obvious one is a natural form of population control.) Thoughts? 

 

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"It would have been very boring if everybody was straight."

 

I think queer identities exist to decrease super-population at least a little.

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Thanks for sharing the video. Differences in sexuality are essential to society just as Autism is. I think asexuality contributes as well. With our minds not being distracted with sexual thoughts, we are able to focus on other ideas. Solving problems in the world if we put our minds to it with full focus. Every genetic difference I feel has its own purpose. We, as a people, need to embrace and accept those differences. 

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Asexuality is one of the many variances in human life.  It does not have a genetic "purpose".

 

It's very close to asexual elitism to assume that because asexuals don't concern themselves with sex, they are better able to focus on ideas/etc.  We waste our time in just as many ways as sexuals do.  

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I understand where this notion is coming from - it's one that comes up every now and then. It sounds nice, but the thing is, you have to be really careful about claiming some trait has an "evolutionary purpose." It's a tricky subject for a number of reasons, and I'll attempt to explain a few of the issues the best I can.

  • In the video, the guy claims that if being gay served no evolutionary purpose, we would no longer observe it because it would have been "culled" by natural selection. This is not necessarily the case. Traits often persist in populations even if they provide no obvious selective advantage. In particular, traits due to recessive alleles can easily hang around for generations by "hiding" in individuals who have one recessive copy and one dominant copy of the allele. You might have heard of people who "carry" a genetic disease - they don't suffer the effects of the disease-causing allele, but they can still pass it on to their children. This is one of the reasons why genetic diseases often don't just "die out" in a few generations.
  • Sometimes variants arise and stick around purely by chance. This is due to a phenomenon known as genetic drift. It is completely random, and it can happen regardless of whether a trait provides an advantage or not. So at least some genetic variation exists "just because," with no identifiable "purpose."
  • Going off of that last point, while natural selection tends to result in organisms that are better adapted to their environment, it is a statistical phenomenon with no ultimate purpose or aim. Natural selection cannot make "perfect" organisms, nor can it anticipate what a species will need to survive in the future. That's why I'm skeptical of the claim that asexuality is needed to prevent overpopulation.

It's interesting to speculate on why asexuality exists in humans. Maybe it does provide some kind of selective advantage, but it could also have arisen just by chance. I don't think we have enough information to know right now.

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Ruru+Saphhy=Garnet

I agree with the post above mine.I don't think we have enough info right now. I think it is just by chance asexuality exist in humans.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/16/2017 at 10:17 PM, AVEN #1 fan said:

"It would have been very boring if everybody was straight."

 

I think queer identities exist to decrease super-population at least a little.

Evolution doesn't work that way. The population doesn't 'choose' traits that hurt the reproduction of individuals. 

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1 minute ago, Ettina said:

Evolution doesn't work that way. The population doesn't 'choose' traits that hurt the reproduction of individuals. 

I was being sarcastic with my first statement. "/

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6 hours ago, AVEN #1 fan said:

I was being sarcastic with my first statement. "/

I've seen people make similar claims seriously. I'm glad you didn't mean it.

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I thought this was interesting. I've heard that asexuality occurs among elephants and that these take care of the orphan elephants :) like natures social services.

Something that occured to me was that the sexual variance makes more sense the wider perspective you have. Looking at a twosome relationship or a nuclear family it might not be very clear what role asexuality would fill, but looking at your extended family, social circle or society as a whole it becomes much clearer to me.

 

Also, evolutionary science might be helpful in some cases, but a persons life should never depend on whether it is "natural" or not!!

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21 hours ago, 10/10Cakes said:

I thought this was interesting. I've heard that asexuality occurs among elephants and that these take care of the orphan elephants :) like natures social services.

Something that occured to me was that the sexual variance makes more sense the wider perspective you have. Looking at a twosome relationship or a nuclear family it might not be very clear what role asexuality would fill, but looking at your extended family, social circle or society as a whole it becomes much clearer to me.

 

Also, evolutionary science might be helpful in some cases, but a persons life should never depend on whether it is "natural" or not!!

I read a similar theory about humans years ago...I don't recall now if it was on AVEN or elsewhere (have to see if I can find it). The theory was that species with vulnerable young may be more likely to have non-breeding members to divide up the workload. *thinks* Come to think of it, since childbirth is incredibly risky for many species, having extra non-breeders around would be essential to raise orphaned young. This could explain, in fact, why families with entirely asexual children are rare/nonexistent. An asexual or gay sibling would be more likely to pick up childrearing duties than an unrelated person, so DNA would still be ensuring its survival. (Dabishop and I, for example, dote on our respective nieces and nephews; I have a lesbian cousin who has acted as a secondary mom to her sisters' kids.) It would be kind of like Squidward's species in Futurama, where the biological parents die after reproducing and the young are raised by a person considered a "third parent."

 

 

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1 hour ago, CrochetFool said:

I read a similar theory about humans years ago...I don't recall now if it was on AVEN or elsewhere (have to see if I can find it). The theory was that species with vulnerable young may be more likely to have non-breeding members to divide up the workload. *thinks* Come to think of it, since childbirth is incredibly risky for many species, having extra non-breeders around would be essential to raise orphaned young. This could explain, in fact, why families with entirely asexual children are rare/nonexistent. An asexual or gay sibling would be more likely to pick up childrearing duties than an unrelated person, so DNA would still be ensuring its survival. (Dabishop and I, for example, dote on our respective nieces and nephews; I have a lesbian cousin who has acted as a secondary mom to her sisters' kids.) It would be kind of like Squidward's species in Futurama, where the biological parents die after reproducing and the young are raised by a person considered a "third parent."

Well, I'm not so sure there's an "evolutionary plan" behind it all, but it's still kind of comforting to see how asexuals and other sexual minorities might fit into the bigger picture of life. The way I see it we are simply social creatures (just like elephants) and as such we are good at finding new dynamic ways to contribute, and tend to benefit from social diversity.

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4 hours ago, CrochetFool said:

I read a similar theory about humans years ago...I don't recall now if it was on AVEN or elsewhere (have to see if I can find it). The theory was that species with vulnerable young may be more likely to have non-breeding members to divide up the workload. *thinks* Come to think of it, since childbirth is incredibly risky for many species, having extra non-breeders around would be essential to raise orphaned young. This could explain, in fact, why families with entirely asexual children are rare/nonexistent. An asexual or gay sibling would be more likely to pick up childrearing duties than an unrelated person, so DNA would still be ensuring its survival. (Dabishop and I, for example, dote on our respective nieces and nephews; I have a lesbian cousin who has acted as a secondary mom to her sisters' kids.) It would be kind of like Squidward's species in Futurama, where the biological parents die after reproducing and the young are raised by a person considered a "third parent."

 

 

The problem with this theory is that your siblings would have to be able to produce two extra kids for every one kid you'd otherwise have had, because your kids have 50% of your genes and your nieces and nephews have 25%. So it would have to be a dramatic effect to counter the impact of not reproducing. In animals the non-breeders are nearly always raising younger siblings (who share 50% just like offspring do) so they can make up for not breeding by raising only one extra sibling for each child they could have had.

 

Personally I think it's either that:

 

a) heteroamatonormativity has led to enough aces and gays having kids anyway that it wasn't weeded out

b) heterosexual (or bisexual) relatives carry the genes and aren't selected against (it's tougher for evolution to get rid of recessive traits)

c) heterosexual (or bisexual) relatives carrying genes that predispose to another orientation have some kind of advantage

 

Regarding the heterosexual carriers idea, there's good evidence to suggest that at least some gay men have an X-linked predisposition to being gay, and these genes either have no effect or might be slightly beneficial (evolutionarily speaking) for their female relatives.  

 

The big question, though, is what is it like to be gay or ace in a hunter gatherer community? That's the lifestyle we've evolved for, after all.  

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@Ettina, I like the possibility of it being a recessive trait far, far more than the theory I posted. (Of course then I would worry about people testing for it like it was a disease, but I'm cynical that way.)

 

On the other hand, every time I try to find a logical evolutionary reason for everything I remember humans still have pinky toes. :redface:

 

 

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No traits have a purpose. Evolution doesn't have a "population control" mechanism.

9 hours ago, CrochetFool said:

I read a similar theory about humans years ago...I don't recall now if it was on AVEN or elsewhere (have to see if I can find it). The theory was that species with vulnerable young may be more likely to have non-breeding members to divide up the workload. *thinks* Come to think of it, since childbirth is incredibly risky for many species, having extra non-breeders around would be essential to raise orphaned young. This could explain, in fact, why families with entirely asexual children are rare/nonexistent. An asexual or gay sibling would be more likely to pick up childrearing duties than an unrelated person, so DNA would still be ensuring its survival. (Dabishop and I, for example, dote on our respective nieces and nephews; I have a lesbian cousin who has acted as a secondary mom to her sisters' kids.) It would be kind of like Squidward's species in Futurama, where the biological parents die after reproducing and the young are raised by a person considered a "third parent."

 

 

Eh, me and my two brothers might all be asexual. 

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Different sexual identities doesn't necessarily have an evolutionary purpose. We don't fully understand the mechanisms behind sexuality, but all sorts of fetishes exists, even things that don't exist in nature, or don't even exist outside of fiction.

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Evolution doesn't have a role or a purpose.  It's not an entity; it's a process.  

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On 17.1.2017 at 7:32 AM, Sally said:

Asexuality is one of the many variances in human life.  It does not have a genetic "purpose"

I find it hard to believe that there's anything without a genetic purpose.

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Genes aren't the same thing as evolution.  However, they don't have a purpose, either, although they may have an effect.  

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On 1/27/2017 at 6:15 PM, Ettina said:

Evolution doesn't work that way. The population doesn't 'choose' traits that hurt the reproduction of individuals. 

Altruism is programmed into genomes. This allows for a higher survival rate for infants, who lose their parent, to survive because another individual who shares genes with the infant will care for it. This has been observed in great apes, baboons, humans, and those are the ones I know they have done studies with.

 

So people or animals who do not reproduce are chosen for, for the survival of the species through altruism. 

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On 2/9/2017 at 1:28 AM, Tairaadansu said:

Altruism is programmed into genomes. This allows for a higher survival rate for infants, who lose their parent, to survive because another individual who shares genes with the infant will care for it. This has been observed in great apes, baboons, humans, and those are the ones I know they have done studies with.

 

So people or animals who do not reproduce are chosen for, for the survival of the species through altruism. 

Altruism is supported by two things:

 

* Helping family members means that some of your genes get passed on because they share genes with you 

* Helping unrelated individuals means that they could help you later

 

An example of the second evolutionary reason for altruism can be found in vampire bats. They have a very quick metabolism and can starve to death if they go 24 hours without feeding. So when they return to their roost at sunrise, if any bat hasn't fed, they'll beg from the other bats, and one of them will regurgitate some of their meal for the hungry bat. They don't need to be related to do this, but they do need to know each other and expect to see each other regularly. It's kind of a "I'll do this for you because I know someday you'll do it for me" kind of thing. 

 

Regarding adoption, sometimes it's just an accidental side effect of the evolutionary pressure to care for your own young. Many animals just are programmed to love babies, because 90% of the time the only babies they'll find are their own. (Female cats are like this.) But in many primates, in adulthood, parents and offspring will back each other up in dominance disputes, so adopting could also improve your social status once the adopted child is grown.  

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17 hours ago, Ettina said:

Altruism is supported by two things:

 

* Helping family members means that some of your genes get passed on because they share genes with you 

* Helping unrelated individuals means that they could help you later

 

An example of the second evolutionary reason for altruism can be found in vampire bats. They have a very quick metabolism and can starve to death if they go 24 hours without feeding. So when they return to their roost at sunrise, if any bat hasn't fed, they'll beg from the other bats, and one of them will regurgitate some of their meal for the hungry bat. They don't need to be related to do this, but they do need to know each other and expect to see each other regularly. It's kind of a "I'll do this for you because I know someday you'll do it for me" kind of thing. 

 

Regarding adoption, sometimes it's just an accidental side effect of the evolutionary pressure to care for your own young. Many animals just are programmed to love babies, because 90% of the time the only babies they'll find are their own. (Female cats are like this.) But in many primates, in adulthood, parents and offspring will back each other up in dominance disputes, so adopting could also improve your social status once the adopted child is grown.  

Thank you for further support and a little more clarification on what I said.

 

I was trying to argue that non-reproducing individuals are indeed valuable in the grand scheme of things. These individuals participate in ensuring the survival of offspring and even other adults.

 

For our ancestors every person filled a role, whether they could reproduce or not. The elderly and disabled would have stayed in camp with children too young or ill to join the hunting or foraging. It is common for a generation gap in child rearing. Children of many Native American people were often raised by grandparents (the generation gap I mentioned). The parents would be engaged in a number of activities such as processing food, gathering food, making household goods and clothing, hunting, fishing, and flintknapping. You knew someone was a good parent if they were learning how to be a grandparent.

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I think one thing we need to consider is whether sexuality is even heritable. We're all going on assuming that sexuality is passed down from parents like hair color, but it's important to consider if that truly is the case or not. If sexuality isn't heritable, then there would be no evolutionary drive.

 

another thing to consider is if natural selection even acts on sexuality, especially in today's age, where we don't really fight nature as much

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

I can't help taking issue with this one @LettuceShoes, not in a nasty way, of course, but your very avatar name brings up just how much we humans are fighting nature. There's such a drought in Spain right now, that the production of lettuces has stopped.Shops are empty of lettuce, courgette and other highly water dependent vegetables are scarce in Europe, and getting more expensive by the minute. And I'm not even going to mention the man made famine and drought in South Sudan....oops!:D

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@chandrakirti I'm sorry to hear about the drought!!! Really my name came about from my dad teasing me and my sister when we shared an account on some other site, he was suggesting names and we yelled out at him to "let us choose!"  to which he promptly dad joked "lettuce shoes?" pretending that he misheard. I thought it was funny and chose it for my internet handle

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Evolution doesn't have roles.  It's a long, slow process, not  an entity.

 

There isn't any definite scientific finding about whether any orientation is genetically-based (meaning that whether your immediate family member is asexual or not can't be assumed to be the reason that you are asexual).   

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8 minutes ago, Sally said:

Evolution doesn't have roles.  It's a long, slow process, not  an entity.

I don't think that one has to rule out the other. Just like characters are being written out of a TV show, creatures with certain traits are slowly being written out of the show called "evolution". Of course it's not like on TV, snip, car crash, character is dead. I view it as a certain branch of creatures that slowly becomes redundant.

 

From that POV, asexuality could be seen as something to increase the possibility of the creature not procreating... since that kind of creature with its features and traits slowly becomes redundant.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 30/1/2017 at 11:53 PM, Ettina said:

The problem with this theory is that your siblings would have to be able to produce two extra kids for every one kid you'd otherwise have had, because your kids have 50% of your genes and your nieces and nephews have 25%. So it would have to be a dramatic effect to counter the impact of not reproducing. In animals the non-breeders are nearly always raising younger siblings (who share 50% just like offspring do) so they can make up for not breeding by raising only one extra sibling for each child they could have had.

 

Personally I think it's either that:

 

a) heteroamatonormativity has led to enough aces and gays having kids anyway that it wasn't weeded out

b) heterosexual (or bisexual) relatives carry the genes and aren't selected against (it's tougher for evolution to get rid of recessive traits)

c) heterosexual (or bisexual) relatives carrying genes that predispose to another orientation have some kind of advantage

 

Regarding the heterosexual carriers idea, there's good evidence to suggest that at least some gay men have an X-linked predisposition to being gay, and these genes either have no effect or might be slightly beneficial (evolutionarily speaking) for their female relatives.  

 

The big question, though, is what is it like to be gay or ace in a hunter gatherer community? That's the lifestyle we've evolved for, after all.  

 

That's an interesting point. 

In my opinion it's frequently overlooked the role of memes in evolution, memes and genes have been influencing each other constantly in the history of human beings.

Usually they both are treated like something isolated but they are not and they are even dependent on eachother.

I think that from a gene perspective the important factor was the hunter gatherer stage which have been the stage that human being have been during over 99% of their existence but from a meme point of view the situation is not the same, but again, like I said both feed each other.

I think that the fact that asexuality and homosexuality have been able to survive is not only related to a direct evolutive role but direct to a Meme pushing, in other words it's well knows that many societies collapsed or even disappeared when their birth rates fell down, so the memes started shifting to pushing everybody culturally to have kids even if they don't care/don't want/don't even like a romantic relationship. That's well known in ancient greek history, people allowed other citizens to have sexual relationships with other men or other women or don't have relationships at all, BUT society pushed and was a MUST to marry and have kids at certain stage because marriage was never seen as a personal choice but a survival choice. That's why the rule in many countries is not that the groom or bride picks their partners, it's the family who pick it for you. 

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