Sexual reproduction

reproduction process that creates a new organism by combining the genetic material of two organisms

300px|thumb|Cornu aspersum|Garden snails mating A hermaphrodite () is a sexually reproducing organism that produces both male and female gametes. Animal species in which individuals are either male or female are gonochoric, which is the opposite of hermaphroditic.

portion of a life cycle in which an organism is capable of sexual reproduction

Dioecy (; adj. dioecious) is a characteristic of certain species that have distinct unisexual individuals, each producing either male or female gametes, either directly (in animals) or indirectly (in seed plants). Dioecious reproduction is biparental reproduction. Dioecy has costs, since only the female part of the population directly produces offspring. It is one method for excluding self-fertilization and promoting allogamy (outcrossing), and thus tends to reduce the expression of recessive deleterious mutations present in a population. Plants have several other methods of preventing self-fe

organs involved in human reproduction

male organism’s sperm fertilizing a female organism’s egg outside of the female’s body

Gynogenesis, a form of parthenogenesis, is a system of asexual reproduction that requires the presence of sperm without the actual contribution of its DNA for completion. The paternal DNA dissolves or is destroyed before it can fuse with the egg. The egg cell of the organism is able to develop, unfertilized, into an adult using only maternal genetic material. Gynogenesis is often termed "sperm parasitism" in reference to the somewhat pointless role of male gametes. Gynogenetic species, "gynogens" for short, are unisexual, meaning they must mate with males from a closely related bisexual specie

how sexually reproducing multicellular organisms could have evolved from a common ancestor species

results of sexual differentiation that are intermediate between male and female poles

pheromone released by an organism to attract an individual of the opposite sex