- #1
somegrue
- 12
- 7
[long post, lots of brainstorming]
Hi,
for quite a while, I've been trying to come up with a reproductive scheme that's sufficiently different from ours to have interesting implications, obvious as well as less obvious ones, without getting too complicated or contrived. This would be the dominant scheme, at least among "higher lifeforms", in an alien ecosystem. One of said interesting implications is meant to be the ecosystem's sapient species having gender dynamics utterly unlike human ones.
I've an idea now that I really like, mainly inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clownfish#Reproduction and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle#Parasitism. It seems more straightforward than any of my earlier ideas, and at the same time so weird that I feel like I need help thinking it though - which I suppose means it meets my conditions.
Here's how it works:
- A child has two biological parents, and is conceived when one type of sex cell combines with the other type of sex cell. I dunno if the pros of calling these "female" and "male" outweigh the cons - cf https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallARabbitASmeerp, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallASmeerpARabbit - but until I do, I may as well use the familiar terms, yes?
- Every child is female, in the sense that she has, or will be growing, functional equivalents of ovary and uterus. Additionally, however, she has an organ for growing reproductive tissue - that's the bit based on the parasitic crustaceans, and no general-usage terms exist, so let's call them "barnacle organ" and "barnacle tissue".
- Once she matures, she mates with one or more males, who supply her with their barnacle tissue, which gets incorporated into her reproductive tract. I'm thinking this somewhat parallels the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuptial_flight familiar from eusocial insects, so let's call this the "queen" stage.
- Like testes, barnacle tissue is for producing two things, male sex cells and androgens. The foreign male sex cells are for fertilising the queen's own female sex cells. The androgens are for switching off the queen's ovaries and instead switching on her barnacle organs, transforming her into a male in turn. Presumably, this would be accompanied by externally visible changes - beard growth, to pick one example.
- The further details of a species' life cycle are then determined by the order in which the barnacle tissue does those things. Generally, it probably makes sense for it to deteriorate more rapidly than the adult ages. If there are no subsequent matings to replenish the supply, that means that the reproductive stage gives way to a neuter stage - somewhat like menopause in female humans, but more so and maybe involving gender as well as reproductivity, due to their intertwining in this scheme. Then again, there may be little evolutionary point to such a stage outside of the more social species, so maybe that needs rethinking.
- Unlike for testes, for banacle tissue to produce male sex cells and androgens at the same time doesn't make sense, surely.
- The two could be produced alternatingly, maybe involving a negative feedback cycle. That would mean the adult keeps flipping between pregnant and male.
- One could give way to the other, maybe in the course of the abovementioned deterioration of the tissue. If male sex cells are produced early and androgens later, that could mean that the male stage more or less coincides with the parenting stage, which could mean an intrinsic conflict between those two roles.
- If it's the other way 'round - androgens first, male sex cells later - (reproductive) sex happens only during early adulthood, first in the female, then in the male role. Then pregnancies, then parenthood.
- If there's barnacle tissue from multiple males, there could also be an antagonistic aspect to this. Like, the presence of androgens could accelerate or decelerate the deterioration of the tissue, so each has to keep "deciding" whether producing sex cells or androgens is currently more to its overall advantage. Yikes!
Okay, that's about as far as I've got. LMK if you see any major holes, or if I forgot to include anything crucial.
---
ETA: Ah, missed at least one major point - how do the mechanics of sex work here, which is to say, what happens with the genitals as the adult goes from producing one type of sex cell to the other? My model organisms, clownfish, don't copulate, so the question doesn't really come up there. The simplest solution that occurred to me is to preemptively "design" a minimally sexually dimorphic sexual organ that works in both roles, along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitoris#Spotted_hyenas. That way, the change from the female to the male role, and back again, should be as simple as a bit of internal "re-plumbing", plus behavioral changes to make up the balance. That may well be too naive, however...
Hi,
for quite a while, I've been trying to come up with a reproductive scheme that's sufficiently different from ours to have interesting implications, obvious as well as less obvious ones, without getting too complicated or contrived. This would be the dominant scheme, at least among "higher lifeforms", in an alien ecosystem. One of said interesting implications is meant to be the ecosystem's sapient species having gender dynamics utterly unlike human ones.
I've an idea now that I really like, mainly inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clownfish#Reproduction and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle#Parasitism. It seems more straightforward than any of my earlier ideas, and at the same time so weird that I feel like I need help thinking it though - which I suppose means it meets my conditions.
Here's how it works:
- A child has two biological parents, and is conceived when one type of sex cell combines with the other type of sex cell. I dunno if the pros of calling these "female" and "male" outweigh the cons - cf https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallARabbitASmeerp, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallASmeerpARabbit - but until I do, I may as well use the familiar terms, yes?
- Every child is female, in the sense that she has, or will be growing, functional equivalents of ovary and uterus. Additionally, however, she has an organ for growing reproductive tissue - that's the bit based on the parasitic crustaceans, and no general-usage terms exist, so let's call them "barnacle organ" and "barnacle tissue".
- Once she matures, she mates with one or more males, who supply her with their barnacle tissue, which gets incorporated into her reproductive tract. I'm thinking this somewhat parallels the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuptial_flight familiar from eusocial insects, so let's call this the "queen" stage.
- Like testes, barnacle tissue is for producing two things, male sex cells and androgens. The foreign male sex cells are for fertilising the queen's own female sex cells. The androgens are for switching off the queen's ovaries and instead switching on her barnacle organs, transforming her into a male in turn. Presumably, this would be accompanied by externally visible changes - beard growth, to pick one example.
- The further details of a species' life cycle are then determined by the order in which the barnacle tissue does those things. Generally, it probably makes sense for it to deteriorate more rapidly than the adult ages. If there are no subsequent matings to replenish the supply, that means that the reproductive stage gives way to a neuter stage - somewhat like menopause in female humans, but more so and maybe involving gender as well as reproductivity, due to their intertwining in this scheme. Then again, there may be little evolutionary point to such a stage outside of the more social species, so maybe that needs rethinking.
- Unlike for testes, for banacle tissue to produce male sex cells and androgens at the same time doesn't make sense, surely.
- The two could be produced alternatingly, maybe involving a negative feedback cycle. That would mean the adult keeps flipping between pregnant and male.
- One could give way to the other, maybe in the course of the abovementioned deterioration of the tissue. If male sex cells are produced early and androgens later, that could mean that the male stage more or less coincides with the parenting stage, which could mean an intrinsic conflict between those two roles.
- If it's the other way 'round - androgens first, male sex cells later - (reproductive) sex happens only during early adulthood, first in the female, then in the male role. Then pregnancies, then parenthood.
- If there's barnacle tissue from multiple males, there could also be an antagonistic aspect to this. Like, the presence of androgens could accelerate or decelerate the deterioration of the tissue, so each has to keep "deciding" whether producing sex cells or androgens is currently more to its overall advantage. Yikes!
Okay, that's about as far as I've got. LMK if you see any major holes, or if I forgot to include anything crucial.
---
ETA: Ah, missed at least one major point - how do the mechanics of sex work here, which is to say, what happens with the genitals as the adult goes from producing one type of sex cell to the other? My model organisms, clownfish, don't copulate, so the question doesn't really come up there. The simplest solution that occurred to me is to preemptively "design" a minimally sexually dimorphic sexual organ that works in both roles, along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitoris#Spotted_hyenas. That way, the change from the female to the male role, and back again, should be as simple as a bit of internal "re-plumbing", plus behavioral changes to make up the balance. That may well be too naive, however...
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