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Asked by stonedgiraffe1234 to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 20 Jun 2011.
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Steven Daly answered on 19 Jun 2011:
Cloning is basically where you create a copy of yourself, that is genetically identical. This copy of you would still be able to evolve in the same way you yourself would participate in evolution, as long as they are part of the breeding population (as long as you have kids).
The problem would arrise if we only created clones, and never had any babies. This would not lead to evolution, at least not in the standard sense.
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Vera Weisbecker answered on 19 Jun 2011:
Another issue is also that if you have lots and lots and lots of clones, then your ability to adapt is lower because there are fewer genes available that Evolution can influence (because clones all have exactly the same genes). So the odd clone isn’t a problem, large-scale cloning is. For example, if you make lots of clones of something like a domestic animal or plant (e.g. bananas or wheat) then there is a higher risk that a disease will wipe out all cloned individuals because they are all affected the same way.
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Katie Marriott answered on 19 Jun 2011:
Two good answers there and I agree with both. Because a clone is an exact copy they should evolve the same as the original if they bred. And as Vera says if we were just to clone animals rather than allow natural breeding the species wouldn’t evolve as it does not allow genetic variation between indiviuals.
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Sam Tazzyman answered on 20 Jun 2011:
Species that reproduce clonally are called “asexual” species. They are affected by evolution just as much as sexual species. An important difference, however, is that in every generation sexual species shuffle up their genes because each offspring has half the genes from its mother and half from its father. In contrast, in asexual species the offspring are clones of the parents.
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