this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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This is an unresolved problem in biology. In general, evolution never makes sense. There is no inherent goal or optimization. If the individual is fit and adapted, it produces offspring. If not, it does not hand down its genes. There is no deeper process involved.
But on the other hand, it is weird how sexual reproduction was selected for many times and rarely reverts back.
Like there are a lot of different modes of it in nature, species with more than 2 sexes, species that have 2 sex organs etc. but it does seem that somehow it gets selected for over alternatives.
Two parent reproduction leads to better adaptability. Asexual reproduction leads to the offspring being genetic copies of the parents, which is great if the parent fits well to the environment it is in, but any change to that environment could be catastrophic and lead to the species dying out. With two genetic sources, it allows for greater deviation in the species. So if there is a change in the environment, some will die, but there is a higher likelihood of some individuals being able to adapt better and survive in the changing environment.
Yeah that's one theory and it makes intuitive sense but if you read the link the person I responded to posted that doesn't fully explain it and doesn't necessarily have statistical backing.
Yes.. the thing is that with asexual reproduction you can reproduce way more and much faster.. so even though each individual division might have less variability, you have many more generations of splits and a bigger population that ends up being forced to spread around more to different conditions and eventually leading to mutations faster than they would have otherwise.
Also, the ease of reproduction makes each individual more disposable, and at that point it doesn't make as much sense to have more mechanisms to protect your genetic material from mutagens, you can just let the mutants die when they are not fit and produce new ones until ultimately you hit the jackpot and achieve a new resistance. This is what makes bacteria so adaptable, with new strains appearing every day.
I feel the question wasn't so much about the sexual process (fusion of genetic information of two individuals) but about sexual differentiation (separation of this information into two parts) . At least, to me "uni sex" is not the same as "no sex". These are different things, in biology you can find creatures that reproduce sexually but do not have sexual differentiation.
Strength in numbers?
I mean, you could say there's no inherent goal on anything, goals are always subjective/constructed, so from that perspective nothing ever makes sense.
But I think the question was how is it possible that sex differentiation could have contributed to make us fit and adapted even though in the surface it might seem to be more like an obstacle to reproduction (and thus, survival).
My guess is that specialization allows for higher level social structures that can more easily organize to survive. You have extreme cases with the bees, ants, etc. whose individuals can even have different sets of chromosomes and are very specialized for specific roles, making them so successful that you have them all over the planet for far longer than humans, millions and millions of years with hardly any changes.