Thread: Trisexual reproduction

do you think that a specie on a another planet mabey could have three sexes?

the specie would have a disadvantage to a specie with two sexes because it would be harder for the whole group to gather and reproduce.

but they would also have an advantage, increased diversity.

I thought it would be a cool concept

let me know what you think

Uh with some sort of triploid genome I guess.

Like you said though, it would be strongly disfavoured by natural selection.

Tho it's not really relevant, I can't help but think of plasmodial slime moulds.

I think Isaac Asimov wrote a novel that had a three-sex species in a parallel universe, called The Gods Themselves. I don't recall exactly what the roles of the three were, but there was plenty of angst about relationships, jealousy, etc. and there was also fusing so perhaps those slime molds were the model. I recall that two could fuse, but it was, ahem, frowned upon, because it was just for pleasure and reproduction couldn't result. Three was the proper number.

Originally Posted by Jon not Ron

do you think that a specie on a another planet mabey could have three sexes?

Was there a re-run of the Star Trek Enterprise episode that had that as a storyline?

Enterprise: Cogenitor

Originally Posted by free radical

Tho it's not really relevant, I can't help but think of plasmodial slime moulds.

Also not relevant but i found a interesting article about slime molds

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s189608.htm

IIRC the greatest number of different "mating types" I ran across in my old college classes in fungi and algae was eight.

The sexual reproduction complexities among the smaller beings of this planet are a wild and woolly and largely unexplored world.

Now in the world of the multicellular, walk-around, diploid beings whose sexual reproduction is essentially obligate, more than two presents large costs in resource and opportunity. One can see great efforts expended to reduce the cost of even the two - many beings feature sexual dimorphism, removing one of the two from competition in the ecological niche; many beings go to some lengths in cutting down on the survival rates or physical presence of one of the two, again removing the superfluous body from the resource competition.

Meanwhile, the advantages of different mating strategies or reproduction patterns seem to be easily maintained through behavioral variability within a given physiological mating type, among beings large enough to incorporate such behavioral possibilities.

The circumstances in which a third mating type, a third physiological sex, in a large organism paid for itself I would like to see described.

Admittedly an advantage of trisexual reproduction would be great genetic divirsity but it would be very hard if the organism became sentient because if their behavior was anything like our own and a formality was placed on mating then issues of agreement would increase because each person would have to be ok with the other 2. Like Bunbury said there would be problems of jealousy due to favoritism(soap operas would be chaos). I doubt any trisexual society could flourish much unless it was very different from our own, that being said it is probably quite likely that other specie's would have different societies so it can be hard to know.

Originally Posted by zendra

Admittedly an advantage of trisexual reproduction would be great genetic divirsity but it would be very hard if the organism became sentient because if their behavior was anything like our own and a formality was placed on mating then issues of agreement would increase because each person would have to be ok with the other 2. Like Bunbury said there would be problems of jealousy due to favoritism(soap operas would be chaos).

At the very same moment, on some planet in some distant galaxy, a sentient and highly educated member of an asexually reproducing species is saying exactly the same about the absurdity of bisexual reproduction and how it cannot be viable in anything but the most primitive beings, such as the algae of his (her? its?) world.

ok i get your point but would asexually be that great either. Asexual reproduction means no genetic divirsity and if that was the case then no fresh ideas would be added to solving problems.

The short answer is that we do not know.

Any speculation about life on another planet has to end with that statement. It is hard to generalise, when your knowledge is confined to a sample of just one (planet Earth).

If we care to speculate, we can be as wild as we like. On that basis, the answer is : "Sure. Why not?"

yep ill agree to that