Obviously, “vigor” can be measured in various ways - from the strictly biological definition of fitness (reproductive success) to various measures specific to human needs (like the production of those ears of corn).Īnother example of hybrid vigor is sickle cell anemia. Their hybrid offspring (which formed the foundation of the “Green Revolution” that supplies much of our current food supply) don’t waste energy growing big, tough stalks, but rather invest all their efforts in producing big, hearty wheat kernels for human consumption. Imagine two prospective parents, each with their own set of positive and negative attributes.įor example (familiar to many plant breeders), a wheat plant that is especially high yielding, and another wheat plant that is very short in stature. One way that sex can make offspring particularly fit is through the phenomenon of “hybrid vigor”. The offspring born to a particular partnership can run the gamut from particularly “fit” (the technical term that biologists use to say that an organism is well-suited to its environment and likely to survive and leave a lot of offspring itself) to weak and sickly. Sex is risky: It leaves the assembly of these traits to chance. As anyone with biological siblings knows, the children born to a set of parents share a lot of traits, but each has a unique subset of them inherited from each parent. Sex allows organisms to rearrange their genes when making the next generation. But in this case, I’m thinking of the fact that sex likely evolved because, sometimes, it’s better when things are complicated. Yes, those of us in the dating world - and, frankly, engaging in any sort of interpersonal interactions - know all about how sex complicates matters socially. One of the things that makes it so complicated is sex. FREDERICTON, CANADA - If there’s one thing I love and hate about biology, it’s that it is so very complicated.

Hybrid vigor definition