![]() ![]() In nature, males with toxic semen would ultimately select females that were immune to it. ![]() While it seems counterintuitive to harm the mother of your unborn sons, the mutations reduced a female’s ability to be fertilized by another male and also modified the female behavior to be less receptive to mating a second time with other males. In that short period of time, males evolved seminal fluid that was toxic to the females, killing many. Any mutation that improved the number of sons a male fly sired would be better represented in subsequent generations. The males that produced the most sons contributed the most offspring to future generations, because only their sons were allowed to breed. In other words, the females’ genetics were frozen in time, insulated from evolution. The sons were allowed to mate with females from a monoculture of a specific genetic profile that could not change. That is about 40 generations, or 1,000 years in human time. William Rice at the University of California, Santa Cruz, collected only the sons of matings between fruit flies over the course of about a year. The hope of preserving biodiversity by only freezing genes from the past is naive.Ĭonsider what might happen when there is a conflict caused by mismatching old genes with new ecosystems. Ecosystems are the result of both genes and environment influencing each other. Biodiversity is a combination of all these potentials. What a gene does depends on where it is, in what genome, cell, or environment. Organisms are what they are because of their genes and the effects of the environment. Sadly, though, evolution could confound such good intentions. And those traits might well be ones that could protect the crop from catastrophic failure, or worse.” Preserving a great diversity of seeds can preserve some genetic diversity-and our ability to feed ourselves-in an adverse future. They are comprised of traits-genes-assembled from previous, even ancient varieties and populations. “New varieties do not spring into existence de novo. In his book Seeds on Ice (2016), Fowler explains his rationale for the seed bank. Let’s start with genetics, the science of genes. Even thinking that might invite disaster. But they are not insurance policies for the apocalypse. Gene banks can do important work to preserve biodiversity and be safety backups that help the world run more smoothly through crisis. Properly accounting for climate change was always only one problem with the vault, though. Gene banks do important work, but they are not insurance policies for the apocalypse. ![]()
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