Reed Bio 342

 

Adaptive Value-ish

 

The adaptive value of asexual reproduction is obvious. It allows for colonization and population growth independent of finding another organism with which to procreate. It also allows for greater conservation of successful genes. However, the asexual reproduction of the whiptails should not necessarily be dubbed an adaptation. Parthenogenesis is the adaptation but this seems an ancestral tendency of ability rather than newly derived adaptation. It should be viewed as exaptation because the asexual lizards seem to be a hybrid species of two other whiptails. The behavior  Given the lack of a gene pool adaptation can only come about by the initial speciation event, mutation in individuals, and heterozygosity already present from parent species.  Therefore, the associated behavior of pseudocopulation is no longer an adaptation but a trait shaped in other evolutionary environments. In terms of the behavior itself, the act of pseudocopulation increases hormone levels which increases ovulating ability as might be expected the sexual-parent species.   

Alistair Cullum researched potential heterozygote advantage given from the blending of two species by comparing an array of physical performance statistics but found no significant correlation. This essentially puts a model of an ecological niche based solely on the ability to proliferate rather than one driven by the union of two particularly superior lizards cross species.