After a few glasses of wine on Saturday evening, a couple of friends commented that they’d like me to write more personal posts. They want me to write about my sex life.

If I thought that my sex life was at all different to the sex lives of others of the same orientation, I would. But it’s not.

The same friends suggested that I turn my blog into a fictional saga about my partner leaving me for another woman. While that sounded like it could be fun, my imagination is too vivid an animal to be fed heart-rending tales of adulterous deceit. I just know that I’d end up inhabiting the role of the aggrieved wife and worry my dear, innocent husband by hurling murderous looks at him, glaring at the knife drawer and saying things that I’d later regret.

Besides, I have a shocking memory and I’d forget the names of the characters and literally lose the plot from one day to the next.

Aphids… now they have fascinating sex lives.

Dr Paul Sunnucks, an Evolutionary biologist, along with international and Australian collaborators, has worked to understand the sex life of the Green Peach Aphid (Myzus persicae).

In the La Trobe University Bulletin of August 2002, an article entitled ‘Climate Change and the Sex Life of the Aphid’, outlined the work of Dr Sunnucks and his team. 

Whenever I hear a title such as the one above, I’m reminded of the play, later a film, called ‘The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds’. I advise you not to use it in a game of charades unless David Stratton is playing.

But getting back to our topic… sex.

According to the above-mentioned article, if a female aphid reproduces by sexual means, her offspring carry half her genes and half their father’s genes, creating unique characteristics. 

If the female aphid reproduces asexually, however, all her offspring are female and genetically identical to herself. In other words, they’re clones. Without even raising a sweat, a female aphid clone can bring forth more than half a dozen female progeny in a day. 

With a gestation period of only about 10 days, the aphid clone can telescope generation, with their unborn daughters carrying their grand-daughters. How freaky is that!

So in the life of a female aphid clone, there’s nary a hint of marauding teenage angst as a backdrop to a mother’s more mature years; so very different from the lives of human females. 

Here’s the truly amazing thing: when female aphid clones reproduce asexually, their numerous female offspring can reproduce independently, too. Male aphids, on the other hand, are abject failures at solo reproduction.

Biologists have been scratching their heads over why sex is so widespread in nature, while being so much less efficient than clonal reproduction. I could give them a couple of reasons for this, but somehow I don’t think those reasons are valid for aphids.

A specialist in evolutionary ecology and genetics of clonal animals, Dr Christoph Vorburger, of the University of Zurich, who’s working with Dr Sunnucks’ team, said that controlling aphid clones would be easier than controlling sexually produced aphids because clones are slow to evolve new resistance mechanisms.

Sexual aphids, on the other hand, can evolve new resistance to control measures because their genes are always changing. In this regard, sexuals have the evolutionary upper hand.

It’s been found that aphids are more likely to reproduce asexually in warm climates. Here in south-east Australia, where our weather ranges from very cold to very hot – often in the same day - we have both clonal and non-clonal aphids. This is where the impact of climate change comes in.

Global warming could increase the number of aphids that reproduce clonally. According to Dr Vorburger, if that happens aphid populations will shift in favour of the clonals.

The good news is that control measures for one clonal aphid will apply to them all and they’ll be slow to evolve a resistance to it. The bad news is that there’ll be millions of them.

Thought to have been introduced accidentally some time in the 20th century, aphids have adapted well to living in Australia. They feed on the soft parts of leaves and stems and are a huge threat to quick-growing, mono-cultural crops. Some of them also transmit plant viruses.

I think that perhaps it’s time for a new play entitled: ‘The Effect of Climate Change on Mono-Cultural-Crop-Feeding Clonal Aphids’.

It could even have a few steamy sex scenes for those voyeurs among us.