What is asexual reproduction? Can someone give me a good explanation?

Answer 1

It's whene an organism multiplys by itself (male and female not required). An example is bacteria or other one celled organisms splitting.

Answer 2

You have a lot of different answers here, and quite a few of them express the mistaken notion that asexual just means one parent. Not true.

Asexual reproduction does not involve the joining of gametes or joining of nuclei or joining of any two cells. Earthworms only reproduce sexually. Each earthworm has male and female organs, makes both eggs and sperms, and gives sperms to another earthworm to use in fertilizing eggs. That's sexual reproduction. Even if a flower is pollinated with pollen from a flower on the same plant, that's sexual reproduction. A sperm nucleus in the pollen is going to join with an egg nucleus in the ovule.

Asexual reproduction always produces offspring that are clones of the parent.

Asexual reproduction makes offspring from a parent without joining any two cells or nuclei together:
1. Binary fission: bacteria and quite a few protists can reproduce this way. They copy their DNA and divide into two individuals.
2. Budding: yeast, sponges, hydra, and some other organisms reproduce by budding. They develop a little bump or outgrowth which grows into a distinct individual which is genetically identical with its parent. In some species the bud breaks away to live independently. In some species the bud may stay attached to the parent.
3. Fragmentation and regeneration: sponges, some flatworms, starfish, and some others reproduce this way. An organism is broken apart somehow and the pieces can grow back into complete individuals.
4. Vegetative propagation in plants: grafting, rhizomes, runners, bulbs, tubers, cuttings, ... These are all asexual.

Those are just some of the ways that asexual reproduction can happen. So throw out the "one parent" "no sex" definition. That's not as accurate.

Answer 3

Asexual reproduction is a form of reproduction which does not involve meiosis, ploidy reduction, or fertilization. A more stringent definition is agamogenesis which refers to reproduction without the fusion of gametes. Asexual reproduction is the primary form of reproduction for single-celled organisms such as archaea, bacteria, and protists. Many plants and fungi reproduce mostly asexually as well. While all prokaryotes reproduce asexually (without the formation and fusion of gametes), mechanism for lateral gene transfer such as conjugation, transformation and transduction are sometimes likened to sexual reproduction.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual_reproduction

Answer 4

asexual reproduction, literally means "without sex".
There are a variety of methods used by plants to do this (its rare in animals) where a new plant (which is genetically the "same" (or practically the same) to the parent)
Strawberries have runners which come off the main plant. where these runners "hit the soil" a new plant grows. There are often muliple runners coming off a single plant (and they spread quickly)
sometimes the root, or part of a root (or rhizome) can form a new plant .like in elm ,dandelion, and some rose family members.
variations on this are bulbs eg tulips, daffodils,
tubers like in potatoes or dahlias
corms like in crorocus and gladioli

There is also grafting (used in hroticulture where you cut the brach off 1 plant and graft it onto another plant)

Answer 5

Some plants and animals are capable of this. It's when one individual can create an egg and fertilize it, thus producing offspring with only their genetic material. An example of a plant is a hydra. I can't think of a specific animal, but there was a lizard that did this recently and surprised a bunch of scientists. There was an article online about it. I can't find it now, but I am giving you some links to Wikipedia.

Answer 6

asexual means no intercourse. the female fish lays her eggs then the male swims over them to fertilize them. plants use asexual reproduction. turkeys and komodo dragons can lay fertilized eggs without a male.

Answer 7

asexual is w/o the fusion of gametes like bateria that divide- earthworms are sexual- monoasious but sexual, flowers are sexual too, the pollen (sperm) fuses with the ova in the flower. bacteria and viri are the only a sexual things i can think of

Answer 8

this is where a single creature can reproduce on it's own with no need for a second donor.

earthworms are an example

Answer 9

self impregnation usually by earth worms and some amphibians

Answer 10

reproduction without intercourse.