eli5 Why Isn’t Inbreeding A Problem For Insects?

387 viewsBiologyOther

Some basic biology i’ve learned is that inbreeding causes problems because the genes aren’t diverse enough, but insects breed with what’s essentially their mother. How does that work?

In: Biology

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Also many colonial insects the queens take sperm from several males so even if the hives were to breed this way (they don’t females go on mating flights and a male from other colonies join) it would not be a serious issue for generations. The problem when you look at say tasmanian devils or cheetahs is long term system interbeeding problems from population bottlenecks. The Tasmanian devils is from 4 or 5 attempts to wipe it out. And in the Cheetahs case it never really recovered from whatever contracted its population 70 000 years ago (and it was not humanity the same thing happened to us) and another one 10 000 years ago. The latter put them where they are today. Of course with plenty of help from modern humans but that is a more recent issue than their historical problems of nearly being wiped out a few times.

You are viewing 1 out of 7 answers, click here to view all answers.