“They haven’t had sex in some 30 million years, but some very small invertebrates named bdelloid rotifers should have gone extinct long ago. Cornell researchers have discovered the secret to their evolutionary longevity: they are microscopic escape artists.
“These animals have evolved a way to avoid parasites and pathogens by drying up and blowing away,” said Paul Sherman, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior.
“These animals are essentially playing an evolutionary game of hide and seek,” said Sherman. “They can drift on the wind to colonize parasite-free habitat patches where they reproduce rapidly and depart again before their enemies catch up. This effectively enables them to evade biotic enemies without sex, using mechanisms that no other known animals can duplicate.”
After drying up, bdelloids come back to life when re-exposed to fresh water. The Cornell study is featured on the cover of the Jan. 29 issue of Science.
Bdelloid rotifers (pronounced DELL — oyd ROW-tiff-ers) are tiny, freshwater invertebrates that have long puzzled scientists because, as completely asexual animals, they should have been extinguished by parasites and pathogens long ago in evolutionary time. Instead, the bdelloids have proliferated into more than 450 species. Asexual animals like rotifers reproduce by cloning and this makes for a fixed gene pool.
Many scientists believe that the function of sex itself is to shuffle genes around. They theorize that the fresh genetic combinations that which sex provides allow sexual animals to fend off relentlessly evolving parasites and pathogens.
The discovery that bdelloids can desiccate and wisp away with the wind helps resolve the mystery of their ancient asexuality and success. “It also helps answer one of the deepest puzzles in evolutionary biology — why sex is nearly ubiquitous,” said Chris Wilson, a Cornell doctoral candidate in Sherman’s lab..”
Read more at Daily Galaxy
Ohh, deleted my own post …lol, it’s better this way believe me
no wonder it’s not extinct–it’s still hoping to get laid!
(oh my–lotta prurient topics this AM, doods! )
All dried up and no sex .. that makes sense …
Bdelloid rotifiers do it in the air. Yeah.
For some reason it does not trigger my imagination .. and it is just one way of seeing upon those populations. The spreading of the genes .. sex .. (it’s not even nation wide most often ..) ..
Why do they want to see it having a function all the time .. it’s simply there .. it’s not an intelligent concept ..
Things die .. things come alive .. for no reason at all… it’s the endless (well …) nature of the All … (oh my god ..).
I dont have sex either .. for trillions of days, hours .. months . years .. can’t remember .. for the simple function … NOT spreading my genes .. only one king in this kingdom … ehehehe …
I do wonder though .. do I want to clone myself? Hm ..
I could be wrong, but they say the pope collects them.
Just saying…
I do think the idea of cloning has some merit, but it’d have to be a mental clone not a physical copy, TOO FREAKY OMG!!!!!! D:
Oh, I see now… My girlfriend is planning IMMORTALITY for both of us :/
Great to hear about this as Dr. Tatiana’s “sex advice to all creation” does raise these beasties as a puzzle in evolution – nice to have that problem solved.