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Abstract:
Th e Tangled Bank hypothesis has been one of the main theories to explain why most organisms reproduce sexually. It
was most forcefully defended by Bell, who argued that genetically diverse off spring are able to extract more food from
their environment than genetically identical clones. Due to the limited applicability of mathematical models and a lack of
evidence that more sib-competition leads to a larger advantage of sexual reproduction, the Tangled Bank hypothesis has
since been abandoned by many authors in favor of the Red Queen hypothesis, which focuses on temporal environmental
variation instead of spatial variation. Here, we argue that the rejection of the Tangled Bank hypothesis is based on a lack
of appreciation of the importance of resources for determining the mode of reproduction, of the fundamental diff erence
between the role of resources and the role of abiotic conditions, and of the negative feedback between resource consumption
and resource availability. Th is negative feedback in fact leads to an ongoing temporal change in resource usage and
thus connects the Tangled Bank concept to the Red Queen concept. We discuss recently introduced models that implement
these ideas, and we suggest empirical studies on the relation between invasibility and genetic diversity of communities in
order to test the Tangled Bank hypothesis more thoroughly
