What is the advantage of two sex in nature?

[Ahmed Abdullah]

Most of the animals along with Homo sapiens are divided into two sex, i.e male and female.
What is the advantage of two sex?
Is it has anything more to do than increasing genetic diversity?

Is there any possibility of occurring more sexual discrimination among animals of the same species (I mean more than two sex)?



Any of your humble comment will be greatly appreciated.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Sex provides very valuable new gene combinations. Plants, fungi, animals - practically all eucaryotic organisms undergo meiosis and sexual reproduction. It has a high metabolic cost, but it provides a huge competitive edge.

Some plants, like some varieties of banana, do not make seeds. They lost sexual reproduction somewhere along the line in human selection of plants to grow. So it is possible to go "backwards" in this sense. PS: these banana varieties would go extinct without human intervention.

 

[MaWM]

Sexual reproduction turns evolution from a serial process to a parallel one. Now, the entire population can evolve new benefical traits and eventually those traits will spread to the entire population (oversimplification). Keep in mind that the typical system contains trillions of bacteria, and they are able to share plasmids do quickly accumulate beneficial mutations.