Kazuya Kobayashi, Research Fellow, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University (PD, Research Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and Eisuke Hasegawa, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Agriculture, Hokkaido University It announced that it has demonstrated that investing in males is a cost of sexual strains for the pest Negia Zamiuma.
Asexual reproduction only propagates in females, while sexual reproduction invests half of its resources in males that do not produce offspring.The growth rate per individual is half (double the cost), and many animals and plants show this inefficient sexual reproduction, but the benefits are unclear.However, if investment in males is a cost, it is possible to reduce the burden by reducing the cost.
This time, census of both strains of Welsh onion thrips revealed that when the number of males of sexual strains increased, the proportion of individuals of sexual strains in the population of Thrips palmi Karny decreased.This result shows that investment in males is costly in competition with asexual strains in sexual strains.
In addition, we conducted a computer simulation that imitated the ecology of the green onion thrips.As a result, the invasion of asexual strains will lead to a reduction in investment in males in sexually occurring populations, and even under conditions where sexual reproduction was speculated to be extinct, this reduction in investment (decreased proportion of males) will lead to extinction. It was confirmed that can be avoided.In other words, it was clarified that sexual reproduction is easier to evolve and maintain than previously expected because investment in males of sexual reproduction can be reduced depending on the situation.
By combining this research with known merits of sexual reproduction, it is expected that the evolution and maintenance mechanism of sexual reproduction, which is widespread on the earth, will be elucidated.
