The Evolution of Sex through the Baldwin Effect
This provides a foundational explanation for sex in evolutionary biology, potentially unifying existing theories.
The paper tackles the evolutionary origin of eukaryotic sex by proposing that the haploid-diploid cycle exploits a rudimentary Baldwin effect, showing through NK model simulations that benefits like recombination vary with fitness landscape ruggedness.
This paper suggests that the fundamental haploid-diploid cycle of eukaryotic sex exploits a rudimentary form of the Baldwin effect. With this explanation for the basic cycle, the other associated phenomena can be explained as evolution tuning the amount and frequency of learning experienced by an organism. Using the well-known NK model of fitness landscapes it is shown that varying landscape ruggedness varies the benefit of the haploid-diploid cycle, whether based upon endomitosis or syngamy. The utility of pre-meiotic doubling and recombination during the cycle are also shown to vary with landscape ruggedness. This view is suggested as underpinning, rather than contradicting, many existing explanations for sex.