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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (2452)	1/23/2001 7:45:30 AM
From: Tom C	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Steven Monogamy gives less competitive males the chance to reproduce, threatening the viability of the species I don’t believe this is true for two reasons. One, it’s not who can reproduce the most often it’s who can reproduce and have offspring that reproduce. Social structures are extremely important in this regard. A frog can produce thousands of offspring but how many of these live to reproduce? I’ll answer that myself, enough that the frog (species) survives to this day. Higher animals tend to have fewer offspring but provide social structures to lower the mortality rates of their offspring. Secondly, “In the grand scheme of things” what does competitive mean? From an evolutionary standpoint, a diverse gene pool is a good thing. A homogeneous gene pool is an accident waiting to happen. One virus could wipe the species out. Variety is important within a population. In times of severe stress like the ice age or a new competitor or a virus it’s variability that helps a species to survive. Absolutely not. The system of reproductive competition, removing inferior or defective genetic material from the gene pool, is an essential part of nature's strategy for the survival of our species. Again, it’s not reproductive competition, it’s those who produce offspring that produce offspring. It’s not the number of offspring that are produced, it’s the number of offspring produced that will reproduce….Having twenty kids is not better than having two if in the first instance only one in twenty survives and in the second instance social structures provide an environment where those two offspring have a higher probability of reaching reproductive age.