Vicar of Bray (scientific hypothesis)

Both the parents produce gametes through meiosis, a special type of cell division that reduces the chromosome number by half.

Therefore, the offspring of a population of sexually reproducing individuals will show a more varied selection of phenotypes.

Due to faster attainment of favorable genetic combinations, sexually reproducing populations evolve more rapidly in response to environmental changes.

Under the Vicar of Bray hypothesis, sex benefits a population as a whole, but not individuals within it, making it a case of group selection.

The hypothesis is called after the Vicar of Bray, a semi-fictionalized cleric who retained his ecclesiastic office by quickly adapting to the prevailing religious winds in England, switching between various Protestant and Catholic rites as the ruling hierarchy changed.

The main work of Thomas Fuller (d. 1661), Worthies of England, describes this man:[8]The vivacious vicar [of Bray] living under King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was first a Papist, then a Protestant, then a Papist, then a Protestant again.

He had seen some martyrs burnt (two miles off) at Windsor and found this fire too hot for his tender temper.

This diagram illustrates how sexual reproduction (top) might create new genotypes faster than asexual reproduction (bottom). The advantageous alleles A and B occur randomly. In sexual reproduction, the two alleles are combined rapidly. But in asexual reproduction, the two alleles must independently arise through clonal interference .