Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson is about how different organisms reproduce sexually or asexually. It goes into detail about a fictional talk show, in which Dr. Tatiana asks organisms how they reproduce. The book then proceeds to talk about how abolishing males from a species can be very dangerous. This book gives accurate scientific information in a creative way.
Sex is necessary for survival for sexually producing species. According to Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson, "...the loss of sex is almost always followed by swift extinction. Apparently, without sex you are doomed"(3). Yet asexually producing organisms can go without having sex all their lives. Why is that? For example: the bedrid rotifer and her family mentioned in this book "has not had sex for more than eighty-five million years"(213). This bacteria also mentions that her species "...abolished males. They said they were better off without them"(214).
This shows that sex is not important for asexually reproducing organisms. Instead of having sex, asexual organisms clone themselves. According to Olivia Judson, "sex may be fun, but cloning is much more efficient"(215). Since "most bacteria don't have sex of any sort very often," they solely rely on cloning to pass down their genetics. Yet in other cases when organisms stop having sex they die. In conclusion, sex is important because without it, organisms go extinct. What is the process of asexual cloning? Why can bacteria go without sex but not humans?
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