Contribution of sexual and asexual reproduction in Porifera and Cnidaria

 

Asexual reproduction offers many advantages to sessile organisms, as it is an efficient way to spread multiple copies of the same genotype, especially in habitats to which that genotype is well adapted, thus avoiding the cost of meiosis, which, through recombination, can result in the loss of co-adapted genotypes. In addition to the rapid production of copies of the same genotype, asexual reproduction often offers the ability to increase the production of gametes in sexual reproduction. On the other hand, sexual reproduction can also be advantageous for sessile organisms because it generally results in the production of larvae that can disperse to more favorable areas, so that sexual species tend to have greater evolutionary persistence. Furthermore, sexual reproduction, because of genetic recombination, increases the level of genotypic variation in the population, allowing adaptation to heterogeneous environments. Thus, although asexual reproduction offers many advantages to the organism, its greatest disadvantage is the decline in genetic diversity in the population. It is therefore important to know the extent of sexual and asexual reproduction of a species, since the genetic structure of the populations of these organisms is a consequence of the relative contribution of these two modes of reproduction. The objective of this line of research is to study the contribution of sexual and asexual reproduction in populations of sponges and cnidarians along the Brazilian coast.