The vast majority of fauna have two sexes. Why aren’t more animals hermaphrodites?
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Having the offspring to have genetic material from at least 2 parents enables faster evolution, natural selection has favored the ability to adapt like that.
TL;DR: Inbreeding is bad.
The process of replication of DNA isn’t perfect, and often leads to some accidental changes in the process. Sometimes these affect irrelevant sections, and sometimes they just make the whole thing completely break down. But sometimes they lead to problems like genetic disorders.
If your gene pool is too small, then detrimental changes are passed down to future generations much more often, and will have a tendency to spread down the generations. This is why over time some isolated groups (either by location, or by social class prejudices – such as various royal family lineages over history) end up finding themselves embroiled in health problems.
Hermaphroditism would tend to have this issue, because theres just one set of genetic material that risks just building up more and more errors. I know some species have found other ways around it; but having the ability to share and spread genetic material around is simply another way around it.
I’m not an expert, but pretty confident in my answer. As life evolved the advantage of two separate sub-categories (sexes) within different categories of life forms (species) became apparent, because greater genetic variability within a population increased their chance for survival and sexual reproduction allowed for the combination of very different genomes, unlike with self-cloning, as for example genderless bacteria do. Once there’s two types of one organism that need eachother to reproduce, it’s then even more advantageous for survival if they have different qualities that compliment eachother, male and female specialised in their own role with regard to raising and protecting their offspring. Pretty sure that’s why all more advanced life forms evolved to have two differing sexes.
because two is the least complex amount that is also bigger than one; evolution tend to take the easiest path, hermaphrodity is seemingly more complex to make it work in the same organism; and there are plenty of other advantages; by seperating 2 genders, you allow those two to gain specific strenghts better adapted to their niche, 2 genders co-evolve to carry 2 sets of different adaptations.
when you look at the environment, nearly all of the 2 gendered species also carry physiological differences from each other, so the evolutionary benefit for complex body structures is surely there.
Environments change over time. Hence Organisms must too to survive. Those with two parents have two sources of genetic material and hence are more diverse to fill in the changed environment. Organisms with only one parent also change but this is comparatively slow.
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