Sex on R

I, the author of “Batrachos” — Dmytro Shabanov, head of the Department of Zoology and Animal Ecology of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University — offer students of all faculties of Karazin University the elective course “The Evolution of Sex and Sexual Strategies: Simulation Modelling in R” (for short, just “Sex in R”). I taught this course in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and will offer it again in the spring semester of 2025. This page holds materials connected with teaching the course in previous years; I hope that, over time, both the quantity and the quality of these materials will grow.

Let me explain the course's emblem. It combines the logo of the R language — a brilliant tool for statistical analysis and modelling — with a symbolic depiction of the essence of sex: the sexual recombination of genetic information. Our mortal organisms (the soma) are vessels, carriers, and transmitters of germ-line cells (the germ). The germ is potentially immortal. The process of random sexual recombination in germ cells is shown schematically in the figure chosen as the course emblem.

Why does the human soma (like that of most highly organised creatures) pass on not all of its genetic information, but only a randomly selected half of it? Could genes have “agreed” to halve the chances of their own transmission to the next generation in order to grant the same opportunity to the genes of another individual — a sexual partner? What selection maintains the persistence of sexual reproduction? These questions are powerful challenges for modern biology.

I draw the attention of students who may choose this course: what we will do on it is precisely modelling. Those interested in how exactly one can have sex with a partner should look for answers on courses in sexology. But the origin of sex (that is, of sexual recombination) and its evolutionary stability are intriguing puzzles for modern science. The diversity of sexual-reproduction strategies is an insufficiently studied and very interesting problem. Simulation modelling lets us come closer to understanding the causes of what we observe. Moreover, the simulation-modelling research skills that students gain while trying to understand the evolution of sex can be useful in many other situations as well.

So I invite students to work on this together!