sexual reproduction
Coverage of sexual reproduction in the Nexus archive.
- Earth's first animals barely evolved until sex changed everything
Earth's earliest animals, which reproduced asexually, created low-competition communities with minimal evolutionary change. A shift to sexual reproduction, driven by environmental pressures, triggered a rapid explosion in biodiversity and accelerated evolution.
- Lack of sex may have slowed evolution for millions of years
A study suggests that early animals' reliance on asexual reproduction slowed evolutionary diversification for millions of years until environmental pressures prompted a shift to sexual reproduction, triggering rapid species expansion. Researchers from the University of Cambridge analyzed Ediacaran period fossils, finding that asexual cloning reduced competition, while stressful conditions like storms and tides later drove increased dispersal and diversity.