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biological sex is real
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@Moon mean, as much as like species is real, i guess. like in biology there aren't any real "hard lines" anywhere; just tendencies and bell-curve-y distributions
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@Moon what do you mean more real?
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@shmibs it's more real than species but I agree there aren't hard lines.
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@Moon or what i mean is so you can have like a functional definition, like "big-gamete-maker and little-gamete-maker" which usually holds, right? but then you have plenty of organisms that can do both and even self fertilise, or will like have one dimorphic role that does both and another that does only one or even have three dimorphic roles, and then there are species that can switch from producing one kind of gamete to the other at different times in their lives, they have some external prompting or so, and then there are also organisms that don't make any, like when living in a colony or something and their role is to remain sterile, right?like there's not really any good place to divide things, same as how with species you'll have very genetically distant gene lines that can still make viable hybrids, or can sometimes make them with the right parent-combination, and then there are other species like insects which can interbreed just fine genetically but like have fancy external genitalia that don't fit together, or special mating calls or something
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@shmibs species are like, linneaen classifications that were given post-hoc scientific justifications but biological sex has success and fail states that shape its definition more concretely. It's hard to refine the concept of species but sexual reproduction refines well I think.I'm familiar with how complicated sex biology is even restricted to just humans though, and is any definition "real" and so my hedging.
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@Moon dunno, i think the "reproduce to make viable offspring" deal is about as strong a definition. like it's definitely noting a pattern that tends to appear, but that at the same time isn't hard-line, human judgement involvedand yeh, if you want to talk humans, there are plenty of weird "failure states". i don't buy "exception proves the rule", though, seems like an empty statement, like if it's really a "rule" there won't be exceptions. and then there's other interesting stuff can appear that feels like it ought to fit into definitions somewhere, like if you have some harem species that has two common body-plans for males for example, big fighty and small sneaky
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@Moon found some fun articleshttps://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/23/4/827/222605http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/feb2000.html
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@mangeurdenuage @Moon ?
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@shmibs @Moon > but that at the same time isn't hard-lineSurvival of the fittest isn't a hard-line ?Like you said previously "but like have fancy external genitalia that don't fit together, or special mating calls or something">if it's really a "rule" there won't be exceptions.That is correct if you put aside the whole randomness of evolution of species, no ? Or am I out of subject ?
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@Moon so then like "sex is gene variation only"? how about then plants that have all sorts of weird polyploid distributions that can only interbreed with certain others and make sort of population gradients?
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@shmibs I'm ok with 28k distinct sexes of fungus but I'm not on board with evolutionary mating strategy differences I think.
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@Bajax @Moon so is species
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@Moon @shmibs my point is that biological sex isn't just a consequence of a random mutation millions of years ago. It's something embedded in the rules of survival in the natural world.
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@shmibs I didn't mean to imply that there weren't many, many variations of biological sex in nature just that there are patterns that work and variations that do not. I'm trying to decide if sex in bees helps or harms my argument because there's arguably a sex that doesn't reproduce.
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@Moon @shmibs bees are an extremely weird case anyway-- the males are all haploid, meaning they could be thought of as living sperm cells.But there seems to be a biological, evolutionarily strategic reason dual sex species are so prevalent, and furthermore why in most of them, regardless of lineage or determination method, the ratios always tend towards 50-50.Hermaphroditic species often engage in competitive behaviors (penis fencing, traumatic insemination) that leave individuals that successfully reproduce at a survival disadvantage. Everyone wants to be the dad, no one wants to be the mom, and it's worth beating the shit out of your partner to avoid becoming a mother.
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@Moon same deal in humans for that actually. like what happens after menopause? are you just not a sex any more?it's not like people just "run out of eggs" or something; it's an evolved transition to sterility, the non-reproducing person doing more for gene propagation somehow than a reproducing person would
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@Moon it's an evolved trait that appears only in certain mammal species, yeh, like in orcas. seems to do with longevity + heavy parental investment, makes more sense for the older female to stop having kids that will compete with younglings and focus on raising those already aroundis the point, though. sex can't be universally pinned on genes because there are organisms, like lots of fish, that swap sex during their lifetimes. and it can't be universally pinned on reproductive roll because we still want to call women female even after a fixed roll switch to caretaker, or call worker ants female even though they live their whole lives as those sterile caretakers. it's definitely a real pattern that tends to emerge, but also depends on human judgement to decide on what counts for any given species, just like it's human judgement to decide on when coyote and wolf are separate
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@shmibs Are you a different sex after menopause?>it's an evolved transition to sterility,Plausible but I would need to be convinced it's not just a function of aging. I admit I'm ignorant about menopause though, so later today after work I'll read the Wikipedia article about it so I'll be an expert :-)
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