I feel like there’s an obvious hypothesis about sex: it’s for gaining the information encoded by genes being prevalent in conspecifics. Since your conspecifics have roughly the same niche as you, their genes are selected for being useful in your niche. To check this hypothesis we might want to see if it can explain the origin of sex in terms of local gradients for asexual bacteria with horizontal transfer: are genes that have a +1% chance per generation of being thrown overboard, and a +1% * [surrounding rate of evolution] per generation rate of organismal fitness increase (or something like that), selected for or against?
I feel like there’s an obvious hypothesis about sex: it’s for gaining the information encoded by genes being prevalent in conspecifics. Since your conspecifics have roughly the same niche as you, their genes are selected for being useful in your niche. To check this hypothesis we might want to see if it can explain the origin of sex in terms of local gradients for asexual bacteria with horizontal transfer: are genes that have a +1% chance per generation of being thrown overboard, and a +1% * [surrounding rate of evolution] per generation rate of organismal fitness increase (or something like that), selected for or against?