Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id JAA03357 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 4 Jul 2001 09:57:06 +0100 Message-ID: <3B42D9B3.5195CE5C@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 09:54:11 +0100 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: sexual selection and memes References: <3B41EEB6.1738.1F589C@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> It goes without saying that all genes tranmitted to only one of the
> two sexes would have to be found on their differential genes - the
> male Y or the female second X. Do we have any examples of
> same, where one sex does not latently carry genes that are only
> expressed in the other?
OK there's some Y-chromosome genes that only ever see a male (and
mitochondrial genomes that only ever get *passed on* by females - that's
a bit weird though), but 99.9% (er...) of our genes are there in both
sexes all the time. What I'm getting at is how would the evolution of
memes be different when there is a route which treats the other gender
as a foreign species - sons get male behaviours from dads, daughters get
female behaviours from mums.
Actually the only stuff that I can really see (off the top of my head)
going this route is the life skills stuff like personal hygiene, and
some rather unsavoury sexist stuff. If I was trying to get evolutionary
about it I suppose I'd expect these single gender memes to evolve more
quickly than those exploiting the whole, rather than half, of the
available grey matter out there (evolution happens faster in small
populations which is why Americans have accents closer to the C17th than
Brits do), but that will be confounded by too much stuff to get a clear
picture (for example, if the behaviours relate to external stuff that
doesn't change it's harder to estimate the effect).
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Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
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