Sexual Selections

This is good book for a lover of popular science. Very accessible, no need to know much biology, very fun to read, plenty of interesting and even fascinating facts. The book is a bit simplistic in its treatment of evolution of different mating strategies, but it's not oriented to hardcore evolutionary biologists, so it's not a big deal.

I was not quite sure what to expect when I opened the first page of this book. What I did find was a sometimes humorous, always informative writing on the subject that seems to have gripped the psyche of modern society - sex. But this is not sex per se. Instead, we deal with the why of sexual selection. Disciples of science fiction are familiar with aliens in which there are no or multiple sexes. But this situation occurs on Earth and indeed, if the author is correct, was the original way of all things. Non-sex remains the norm among the "lower" organism - bacteria, plankton, viruses and appears to be one of the most telling evolutionary developments. The author offers an enlightening and extended discussion of sex among other animals and plants as well as a good explanation of sexual processing at the cellular level.

This reference starts off by showing that an important unsolved problem in evolutionary biology is why sex should be necessary. Sex appears to be required by most higher lifeforms. Indeed, most asexual species which exist are recent derivations from sexual species, implying that without sex a species tends to go extinct. The mechanisms of sex at the cellular level are considered. The book then considers mating behaviors of various animals.