Sex origin and evolution

The Symposium on the «Sex Origin and Evolution», organized by the Unione Zoologica Italiana, has the ambitious aim of stating the current position on an important aspect of the life of organisms, after the many important advances in this field in the last few years. In common language and in popular science, it is not unusual to find definitions and examples of sexuality which have nothing to do with the real meaning of the term. Such confusion certainly does not help the topic to be correctly divulged, which is one of our purposes as researchers. The Symposium therefore has the aim of supplying the necessary elements for the discussion of sexuality in an up-to-date and complete manner, to anyone interested in the subject. A unequivocal definition of sexuality is far to be found. In a broad sense, sexuality is everything involving the transfer of genetic information from one individual, cell or organism, to another. How this end was achieved in prokaryotes three thousand million years ago and how this process established and differentiated in more evolved organisms, are all questions which will be examined and discussed in the course of the meeting. The Symposium is structured in four Sessions: origin and evolution of sex; sex determination and differentiation; regulation of the reproductive activity; special features: parthenogenesis and hermaphroditism.