Module 5 Cell Division

Lesson 6—Variation in Reproductive Strategies

Get Focused

You probably don’t remember much about the time of your life when, for a short while, you lived as a sperm and an egg. It seems somewhat silly to talk about our life as a gamete, but for many life forms it is a major part of their life cycle. For example, moss gametes grow and divide to become free living organisms before they create a single cell that will fertilize another to become a new generation of moss. The drive to reproduce and survive has lead to some very interesting strategies.

In this lesson you will learn about the diversity among reproductive strategies for a range of organisms, as will you gain an appreciation for the variety of ways species balance their life cycles.

In this lesson the following focusing questions will be examined:

• What are the advantages or disadvantages of different reproductive strategies?
• Why do organisms vary their reproductive strategies?

This lesson will take approximately 80 minutes to complete.

Module 5: Lesson 6 Assignment

Here is a tutorial video for this lesson that you can watch if it suits your learning style.  Bio30 tut# 3.5.6 Alternation of Generations