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FRAGMENT FROM NATURE concludes this weekend on the theme of competition and resource allocation. At all levels of living creatures, from different species in ecosystems — from identical populations, from individual organs, from the cells within the body, from the ecosystem of organelles in cells, to the very genes — there is evidence of competition for key limited resources. These nested hierarchies of communities of living parts all appear to play out a dance between natural selection versus preferential resource allocation. View in LinkedIn

NEW CRITERION OF SELECTION. "We conclude that the least-time free energy consumption in respective surroundings, as the general criterion of natural selection, determines also sexual and asexual modes of reproduction." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264712001700 View in LinkedIn

"MEIOSIS is the type of cell division that gives rise to eggs and sperm." Versus mitosis which occurs during normal development and growth and does not alter the chromosome number. https://lnkd.in/dt3vnRH View in LinkedIn

ENERGY STRATEGY. "Parthenogenesis is a fast way to consume a rich repository of free energy, e.g., an ample stock of food with a large number of individuals, whereas sexual reproduction is a fast way to consume diverse and dispersed resources with a large variety of individuals." (Parthenogenesis is a type of asexual reproduction in which the offspring develops from unfertilized eggs). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264712001700 View in LinkedIn

DIPLOID FORM. “For most plants and all animals, the majority of life is spent in diploid form. During sexual reproduction, haploid gametes are formed via meiosis and then come together during fertilization.  Some simpler Eukaryota spend most of their life cycle in diploid form.” https://lnkd.in/dTisCwg View in LinkedIn

FREE ENERGY CONSUMPTION. "On the basis of the 2nd law of thermodynamics we find that both sexual and asexual reproduction can be regarded as a means to consume free energy in least time." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264712001700 View in LinkedIn

MEIOSIS is needed to keep the chromosome number the same in diploid sexual creatures from one generation to the next. https://lnkd.in/dGqaW47 View in LinkedIn

MEIOSIS is at the heart of longevity and only occurs in sexual creatures. http://www.bu.edu/gk12/sully/AsexualLessonKey.pdf View in LinkedIn

FITNESS ADVANTAGE OF SEX. "The observed advantage in fitness of naturally occurring, sexually derived genotypes over asexually derived genotypes during adaptation reaches 30%–50%, but this underestimates the difference in fitness between “high-sex” genotypes and “low-sex” genotypes." https://lnkd.in/ePUmiA8 View in LinkedIn

ALLELE DIVERGENCE. "Though sex does not immediately affect allele frequencies, it alters the genetic variance, which allows subsequent selection to cause allele frequencies to diverge between more versus less sexual lineages." https://lnkd.in/ePUmiA8 View in LinkedIn