The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction (14 page)

In a marginal habitat, it pays to pass on to your children your proven genotype, unchanged. Only a few things can live where you live, and on balance, it’s best to stick with the tried and true. And saving energy with low-cost solo reproduction is a big help too.

OK, then—since sex is a choice, why choose sex?
⁷

Field studies indicate that the number one reason for sex is biological interactions between species. Mainstream habitats are rich in predators, pathogens, and parasites. Sex, by shuffling genes, is especially good at protecting against parasites and disease. Studies in the lab—evolution in a bottle—show that those odd creatures that switch between sexual and asexual reproduction, like the water snail,
Potomopyrgus antipodarum
, get sexy when their parasites start hopping.

You see, it’s the tiniest “predators” that evolve the fastest. Compare the life cycle of a flea (four weeks) to its prey, your cat, or compare a human life span to the two-week flu virus life cycle. Pathogens have many extra generations for natural selection to work, so they quickly hone in on the genetic weaknesses of, well,
you.
Prey must evolve, shift genetic profiles, to combat these enemies. Evolutionary biologists call this the “Red Queen Hypothesis” and liken the costly persistence of sexual reproduction to the Lewis Carroll character who had to keep running to stay in place.

 

Both sexual and asexual lifestyles have their niches, and a great example lives as close as your backyard.

In their native Eurasia dandelions grow as normal flowers, producing male pollen carried by bees to fertilize female ovules. But dandelions have also evolved asexual lines that clone themselves and send out seeds containing identical DNA. The “old sod” in Europe is golden with sexual dandelions, but it is the asexual ones that have blanketed the virgin continent of North America. They are a beautiful example of just when asexual reproduction is best. Far from their native pests and pathogens, sex-free dandelions have colonized every lawn in the USA because they are able to spread faster than their sexual relatives—even while wasting energy producing cheery yellow flowers that no bee will ever fertilize.

So the next time you’re in the mood to mate, stop and consider an alternative used by bananas, bacteria, lizards, and sharks. Maybe it is better to close the curtains and just do it yourself.

 

REFERENCES:

Crews, Grassman, and Lindzey, “Behavioral facilitation of reproduction in sexual and unisexual whiptail lizards,”
Proc Nat Acad Sci USA
83 (1986), 9547-9550.

Juliet Eilperin, “Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone, Researchers Find.”
The Washington Post,
http://tinyurl.com/2aaau4

Lively, Craddock, and Vrijenhoek, “Red Queen hypothesis supported by parasitism in sexual and clonal fish,”
Nature
344 (1990), 864 -866.

Lively and Joleka, “Temporal and spatial distributions of parasites and sex in a freshwater snail,”
Evolutionary Ecology Research
4 (2002), 219-226.

Thomas F. Savage, “A Guide to Recognition of Parthenogenesis in Incubated Turkey Eggs,” Oregon State University (2008),
http://tinyurl.com/y56s4xj

“Sorry about your loss. On a brighter side, you could have lost this one . . .”

—Fan mail snark

 

Women are evolution’s greatest gift. They nurture, protect, and educate their offspring, ensuring survival of the next generation. In fact, female Darwin Award winners are incredibly rare! But they do appear from time to time, and we’ve collected seven of these elusive elegies here.

 

 

 

 

3 JUNE 2009, NORTH CAROLINA | Greensboro was inundated with four inches of pouring rain in two hours, stranding cars on flooded roads. Rosanne T., on her moped, was not deterred. She hopped on and drove to a convenience store where she “possibly had a beer,” according to her mother, before deciding to blunder home through the storm.

North Carolina does not require a license to drive a moped.

Ms. T. had acquired hers two years previously after a DUI conviction.

The highway patrol had blocked off several roads that were flooded, including Rosanne’s path home. But she rode right past the officer and the barriers, lost control of her vehicle, and fell into the swollen creek below. The officer retrieved rope from his vehicle and proceeded to haul her from the water, saving her from potential doom.

He then interviewed the woman, presumably inquiring about her motives for speeding through a police roadblock during a flash flood. When the officer returned to his patrol car to call in the incident, Rosanne took the opportunity to escape—
by jumping back into the creek!

The officer attempted to rescue her again, but alas, it was too late.

The victim’s mother speculated that her daughter’s motivation for jumping into a flooded creek was to rescue her drowning moped. “She loved that thing.”

 

Reference:
news-record.com
, Greensboro, NC,
wxii12.com

 

“Just because you have two rubber wheels does not mean you cannot drown . . .”

“North Carolina’s finest . . . First-ever woman to become a finalist for the Darwin Awards.”

“First woman
ever!!
Are we honored or what?! NOT!”

 

 

30 MAY 2009, LOUISIANA | Backseat drivers beware! Annoyed at how slowly her boyfriend was driving, Tamera B., twenty-two, encouraged him to pick up the pace so she could get to work on time. Joking that it would be faster to walk to work, she opened the door of the pickup truck and stuck her foot out—before falling out the open door to her death. Whoops!

But wait! Was her complaint valid?

Nope. Deputies of the jurisdictional sheriff’s office stated that the truck was traveling at “highway speed” on I-12 at the time of the incident. Her death was ruled accidental.

 

Reference: New Orleans
Times-Picayune
,
Nola.com