Is Sexual Reproduction Important?

           Sexual and asexual reproduction are both methods of reproducing, but sexual reproduction is when egg and sperm combine sexually. Asexual organisms reproduce by cloning. There are pros and cons to both methods of reproduction. Sexual reproduction has problems concerning population growth. They must reproduce two children to maintain their population, and one child decreases the population and three children or more increase the population. Asexual organisms only need to reproduce once to be able to maintain their population. Asexual organisms also go extinct very quickly due to their inability to adapt to environment changes or fight off parasites. In sexual reproduction, half of your genes come from the mother and the other half come from the father. The offspring's genes will be a combination of their parents' genes at random; so long as they have half of their genes from each parent. Miss Philodina explained how if you clone yourself during asexual reproduction, mutation is the only cause for error, unlike sexual reproduction. another claim made was by the pocket mouse who reasoned that without sex, the asexual organisms couldn't adapt to changes in their environment. Miss Philodina explained how most mutations are harmless, and only change the sequence of a gene, not the information of it. Dr. Tatiana explains to her audience that sexual reproduction shuffles genes around more, leaving less room for mutation. With asexual reproduction the same genes (and mutations) are passed on and on. I was confused about a mentioning of a process called anhydrobiosis, where it was said this process was when the asexual organisms essentially dried up and blown away, emerging out more healthy and strong. This explanation confused me and I would like to learn more about it. I would also like to learn about the process behind which asexual organisms clone themselves.

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