CAN MALES CONTRIBUTE TO THE GENETIC-IMPROVEMENT OF A SPECIES

In the time evolution of finite populations, the accumulation of harmf ul mutations in further generations might have lead to a temporal deca y in the mean fitness of the whole population. This, in turn, would re duce the population size and so lead to its extinction. The production of genetically diverse offspring through recombination, is a powerful mechanism in order to avoid this catastrophic route. From a selfish p oint of view, meiotic parthenogenesis can ensure the maintenance of be tter genomes, while sexual reproduction presents the risk of genome di lution. In this paper, by using Monte Carlo simulations of age-structu red populations, through the Penna model, I compare the evolution of p opulations with different repoductive regimes. It is shown that sexual reproduction with male competition can produce better results than me iotic parthenogenesis. This contradicts results recently published, bu t agrees with the strong evidence that nature chose sexual reproductio n instead of partenogenesis for most of the higher species.