Biparental Reproduction may Enhance Species Sustainability by Conserving Shared Parental Traits more Faithfully than Monoparental Reproduction

Recognized effects of sexual reproduction and other forms of biparental reproduction in species sustainment and evolution include the increasing of diversity, accelerating adaptation, constraining the accumulation of deleterious mutations, and the homogenization of species genotype. Nevertheless, many questions remain open with regard to the evolution of biparental reproduction. In this paper we contribute an initial exploration of finer details of the homogenization effect that we believe deserve focused analysis and discussion. Specifically, rudimentary mathematical analyses suggest the perspective that biparental reproduction enhances the retention in the offspring of shared, i.e., common, properties of the parent generation, as compared with monoparental, clonal reproduction. We argue that this is an intrinsic effect of merging the encodings of parents' traits, regardless of physical, chemical, biological and social aspects of the reproduction process and of the trait at hand. As the survival of offspring often depends on their ability to step in and actively fill the voids left by failing, dying or absent members of the species in interaction networks that sustain the species, cross-generation retention of common species properties helps sustain the species. This side-effect of sexual reproduction may have also contributed to the very evolution and pervasiveness of sexual reproduction in nature.