Explanation:
Asexual Reproduction
Are there male and female bacteria? How could you tell? Remember, bacteria have just one chromosome; they do not have an X or Y chromosome. So they probably have a very simplified form of reproduction. Asexual reproduction, the simplest and most primitive method of reproduction, involves a single parent and produces a clone, an organism that is genetically identical to the parent. Haploid gametes are not involved in asexual reproduction. A parent passes all of its genetic material to the next generation. All prokaryotic and some eukaryotic organisms reproduce asexually.
Asexual reproduction can be very rapid. This is an advantage for many organisms. It allows these organisms to crowd out other organisms that reproduce more slowly. Bacteria, for example, may divide several times per hour. Under ideal conditions, 100 bacteria can divide to produce millions of bacterial cells in just a few hours. However, most bacteria do not live under ideal conditions. If they did, the entire surface of the planet would soon be covered with them. Instead, their reproduction is kept in check by limited resources, predators, and their own wastes. This is true of most other organisms as well.
There are a number of types of asexual reproduction including fission, fragmentation, budding, vegetative reproduction, spore formation and agamogenesis. Spore formation occurs in plants, and some algae and fungi, and will be discussed in Plant Biology additional concepts.
