Is Sexual Reproduction Important?

   In the book, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation by Olivia Judson, Judson explains about how different organisms reproduce. Mammals and some other organisms reproduce sexually, with a mate, while some organisms, like the Philodina, reproduce asexually. Sex is very important. The benefits of reproducing sexually is that your offspring is a bit different than both parents meaning that if there were to be a disaster, your offspring may survive because it is not identical. This means that their populations are better adapted. Some costs of reproducing sexually is that it is not very efficient, you have to try to look for a mate. According to Dr. Tatiana, herself, males dispense a lot energy to try to win over a female to mate. Asexual beings do not have to do that, so they can more efficiently reproduce (replicate).To reproduce asexually, the organism does not need a mate and the offspring will have the identical genes of the mother. In an asexual population, there are no males, just females that clone themselves. Some advantages of asexuality include how there is a better demographic of population because the female only needs to have one offspring to be balanced and more than one would be extra population. Another pro is that asexuality is much more efficient, in the sense that one can have a child anytime and does not need to depend on any other organism of its own species. According to Miss Philodina, her population is much more efficient and larger than the non-asexual populations. Miss Philodina also argued that her species has been asexual for 85 million years. Cons include the offspring not having any gene difference meaning that if something was to kill some of them , they would likely all die because they are all the same and one is not better protected than the other. According to Muller's hatchet is because the generations did not have any adaptation, it would not survive to any changes. Because of this, many asexual species tend to face extinction relatively soon after the conversion to asexuality. In this upcoming unit, I do hope to further understand why a some organisms choose to reproduce asexually if sexually is clearly better? Another question I have is, what happens to organisms that might lose any way to reproduce sexually/asexually?