There’s a video interview with Richard Dawkins at Big Think in which he talks about the irrationality of sex – much as I do in 13 Things. The basic problem is that it involves sharing genes and reproducing half as fast as asexual species. Each of these halves the rate at which you pass on your genes, which is why John Maynard Smith called it the "fourfold cost of sex".

I can’t help wondering whether horizontal gene transfer seen in rotifers may have provided some of the answer since the book went to press, but Richard doesn't seem to mention that (hence my title!). There are still unanswered questions, of course. The importance of sexual vs social selection is one, and the role of parasites is another. Then there’s the issue of whether the shuffling of genes in sexual reproduction does give survival advantage in a changing environment. The literature is mixed on this, as I explain in 13 Things, but this recent piece of research, published in Nature, suggests it does help. Still an open question, I think – but maybe it’s closing. If only Maynard Smith were alive to see it.

As a postscript, I feel bound to mention that I live about a mile from where Maynard Smith lived. He once told me his neighbour was a creationist, and wouldn't talk to him because of his scientific take on existence. If God does exist, there's definitely a divine sense of humour. In the UK, such hard-line creationists are pretty rare. The idea that the greatest living exponent of evolution would be living right bang next door to one is too delicious...

Great to see the selfish gene being exposed to a bit of scrutiny in this New Scientist article. Biological organisms are, according to the selfish gene hypothesis, supposed to be concerned only with the individual’s survival. That way, the genes within that individual are, effectively, immortal.

Alternatives, such as group selection, where behaviours and traits offer benefits to the group rather than the individual, are anathema to most biologists. Richard Dawkins once called the idea “sheer, wanton, head-in-a-bag perversity.” But that’s exactly the kind of attitude that ought to ring alarm bells: history tells us that when scientists close their eyes to a possibility, however remote, they can end up missing something profound. In 13 Things, I suggest that the mysteries surrounding sex and death might be resolved with the rehabilitation of group selection as a valid research area.

It’s interesting to read in the article that “the proponents of group selection agree that only a few potential examples have been identified so far, such as the small size of some annual plants that grow together and reduced virulence in some parasites (to keep their hosts alive).”

A lot of that may be to do with the fact that only the brave, the foolish or the tenured can research group selection. The risks to your career are just too high.

As a result, challenges to the selfish gene are by no means convincing yet. But at least they’re coming out of the cold:

It is still too early to know whether group, species and ecosystem-level selection are major evolutionary forces or merely minor curiosities - baroque ornaments on the central edifice of individual or gene-level selection. But the dominance of the "selfish gene" in evolutionary thought is facing its strongest challenge in many years.

There’s a great piece of writing in the Times Higher this week. It’s by Tim Birkhead of Sheffield University, and it’s all about how Darwin dealt with sex. Stuffed with anecdotes, sniggers and first-hand (and first-rate) information (Birkhead has been trawling through the Darwin Correspondence), it’s exactly what science writing is all about.

Birkhead argues that Victorian mores meant that Darwin self-censored once his writings were being read, or chose not to see what was right in front of him. Take the case of Darwin’s cousin’s geese: they showed clear evidence of infidelity, sperm competition and multiple paternity.

If Darwin had put two and two together, the study of sperm competition - now a major area of research - might have been launched in 1870 rather than 1970. “Why did Darwin ignore the evidence and why did it take a century for others to make the connection?

What Darwin didn’t censor, his daughter Etty often did. Later, she displayed her sensibilities in a strange campaign against nature:

In later life she single-handedly began a campaign to have the stinkhorn fungus - whose Latin name, Phallus impudicus, simultaneously both identifies and describes it - removed from the English countryside because of its influence on the maids.

The result, Birkhead says, is that the biology of sex has been set back a hundred years:

The upshot of all this was that Darwin steered clear of female promiscuity and plumped for female monogamy, an idea that then remained firmly fixed, in biologists' minds at least, for a full century.

I first came across this fixed mentality a couple of years ago in La Jolla at the Beyond Belief conference. Joan Roughgarden had a stand-up debate with Richard Dawkins where she said biology was plagued by “locker-room bravado". Basically, the boys in charge of biology have always liked the alpha male idea, and ignored the evidence of female promiscuity (and homosexuality, of course) for as long as they could.

It seems they can’t any longer. And, as Roughgarden explains in her book Evolution’s Rainbow (there's a free chapter on female choice through that link) that has profound consequences.

13 Things’ chapter on sex touches on some of this stuff as a route to explaining the problems with sexual reproduction. It’s a fascinating area of biology – but start with Tim Birkhead’s piece. Go on – it’s freely available, after all. Which I only found out after I'd bought it. Damn.