From: scerir (scerir@libero.it)
Date: Tue Dec 05 2000 - 15:57:18 MST
Computer Simulations
for Biological Ageing
and Sexual Reproduction
D. Stauffer, et al.
http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0011524
[abstract]
The sexual version model of biological ageing
is compared with alternative forms of reproduction
as well as with models not involving ageing.
In particular we check how sexual forms of life
could have evolved and won over earlier
asexual forms, hundreds of million years ago.
This computer model is based on the mutation-accumulation
theory of ageing, using bits-strings to represent the genome.
Its population dynamics is studied by Monte Carlo methods.
The computer simulations of biological ageing,
could explain nicely the roughly exponential increase
of mortality functions with age,
the existence of menopause,
and the existence of other forms of reproduction
besides asexual cloning of haploid genomes.
We speculate that from this asexual way,
mother Nature may have evolved via apomictic
and/or meiotic parthenogenesis towards hermaphroditism,
and only later separated the population
into males and females because of external reasons.
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