From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Dec 01 1999 - 12:59:31 MST
On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> Look, I was going to write about this earlier, but I feel like I can't
> help but mention something about it now. If homosexuality was some
> recessive trait which was advantageous in the heterozygous form, we'd be
> seeing a LOT more homosexuality than we actually do. "1 in 4, maybe more"
> would be true everywhere, all across the world, and bluntly, it's just
> not. It would surprise me a Great Deal if some kind of "gay gene" were
> ever found that provided some heterozygous advantage.
>
Dan,
It may be much more subtle than this due to partial penetrance
and other offsetting factors. To go from 25% down to 5-10%
(current estimates of homosexuality) would only take 1-3 more
genes being involved.
If you take a "hypersexuality" gene, combine it with a
"mate" discrimination gene and a "pheromone" preference
genes and already you are getting enough combinations to
make selection & activity biases very complex.
I suspect you could subdivide homesexuals into hypersexual
and hyposexual types depending on pheromone matches,
and a combination of genetic & environmental "desirability"
matches. E.g. if I get a pheromone match and "he" has
characteristics my mother had, I'll go for him, but
if she doesn't match my pheromone/"desirable" mate
profiles, I'd have to be highly hypersexual to go for her.
Robert
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