Brainstorm with classmates some ideas about the advantages of sexual reproduction—other than pleasure—and report back to the class. (Hint: check into Darwin’s tenets, below.)

If you came up with the idea that variation in offspring is an advantage, then take it a step farther and explain why variation in offspring could lead to better survival.

Can you come up with some disadvantages of sexual reproduction? (Hint: think of the cheetah or the blue whale, or Lonesome George, the tortoise).

Now how about advantages and disadvantages of asexual reproduction? Here you need to consider a scenario where every single organism is an exact copy of another, and there is a sudden environmental disaster. What then?

Make a table like the one below in preparing a report to the class: