Asari mating, Protheans and Ardat-Yakshi

I don't know why but a sudden thought occurred to me about asari biology, in particular their ability to reproduce.  This is, as far as I can tell, an innate biotic ability.  They have it from a relatively early age (if not birth) and can also use it to mind meld with other individuals, even if it doesn't result in a pregnancy (or however they have children).  

This is all well and good except that in ME3 we learned that the Protheans genetically altered the asari to have innate biotic abilities.  That suggests that they had no such abilities prior to this genetic tampering.  It's not necessarily an invalid conclusion, either, since exposure to eezo is more likely to kill than create a biotic.  However, that leads us to a question about how asari mated prior to being altered by the Protheans.  If they are truly mono-gendered how did they reproduce before they could "embrace eternity"?  Did the changes in them somehow cause males (or even a different gender that doesn't exist on Earth) of the species to cease to exist, even if unintentionally?  And if that's the case, could it be what caused the Ardat-Yakshi to come into existence?  I mean, it doesn't seem like such a thing as Ardat-Yakshi would naturally occur when mentally mating with a person of one's own species but not when done with another species.

It's all very weird to me.  So I'm making a supposition that maybe there once was another gender of asari that was genetically engineered out of existence to allow asari to mate purely with their minds.  This had a side effect of creating Ardat-Yakshi and forcing asari into having to mate with other species in order to survive since A-Y cannot have children.

Yes, I know this is off-the-wall, but it came to me really suddenly tonight.  Thoughts?