A truly pluralistic view of sex and recombination

Although West, Lively and Read recognize the challenge that sexual reproduction poses for evolutionary biologists, their pluralist approach is so narrow as to have little chance of meeting it. Other commentators will no doubt explore the role of nondeterministic models and of empirical and experimental tests of these models. Here I expand the investigation beyond the traditional con®nes of population genetics and into phylogenetics, protistology, cell biology and molecular genetics. These ®elds contain much that is critical to unravelling the evolution of sex, and, because researchers in these areas are largely unaware that sex poses a problem at all, the onus is on those of us who appreciate the problem to extend our search for the answers. I also expand the approach; in addition to ®nding out how genes ought to be selected (in theory), or how they can be selected (in the laboratory), we must consider how they have been selected over real evolutionary time. Below I discuss three approaches: the cytology and molecular biology of meiosis, the broad context of processes that generate genetic variation, and the phylogeny of meiotic sex.