• Question: Why do animals develop to split as a means of reproduction, and others go through sexual intercourse?

    Asked by XandyisBAE to Juhi on 8 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Juhi Gupta

      Juhi Gupta answered on 8 Mar 2018:


      Evolution plays a huge role in adapting each organism to reproduce in the most efficient way for them. So for bacteria for example, binary fission (or diving cells/asexual reproduction) means that they can produce many bacteria very quickly. This is useful for their survival.
      Elephants on the other hand, reproduce less often (via sexual reproduction), every 5 years. Elephants pregnant for around 23 months, therefore an elephant may only have 6 elephants in a lifetime. As you can imagine, a lot of energy goes into reproducing an elephant often compared to bacteria. And of course, they are both the opposite when it comes to size!
      With both types of reproduction, you may be aware that there is less genetic variation in a population that has come about from asexual reproduction (they are basically clones of each other). Whereas sexual reproduction means that two different genetic mates can produce an offspring with a varied combination of genes. This is good news especially when change in condition occurs, such as an outbreak of a deadly virus, the different genetic features can come to the rescue. If clones did not have the gene (or genes) that would help them survive the virus, then none of the bacteria population would survive. This concept is known as ‘Natural selection’.

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