Why Two Sexes?, arXiv Bookmark and Share

Excerpt: Are males really needed? (...) Why is the crossbreeding needed? (...) Why are two sexes needed? (...) Interesting lizards live on the mountains of Armenia, by the shore of Lake Sevan. A peculiarity of the species is that they do not have males; their females deposit non-fertilized eggs from which only females hatch. Such a reproductive method is extremely simple and very rational: each animal can produce progeny and the difficulties of finding a "spouse" are eliminated. It turns out that the task of reproduction can be performed quite well without males.
  • Source: Why Two Sexes?, Vigen A. Geodakian, trans. by Boris Lubachevsky - bdlabell-labs.com, DOI: cs.NE/0408006, arXiv ["Nauka i Zhizn"], 1965