how the male and female reproductive systems have evolved to insure the fitness of the human race?

Toshia Metzker: That's a very vague question. The only answer that would make any sense at all would be the following:Human beings have evolved to be sexually reproducing organisms. Sexually reproducing species have greater genetic diversity than asexually reproducing species. Greater genetic diversity allows the process of natural selection to proceed at a faster rate, favoring (selecting for) those genes that code for traits that allow the organism to adapt best to the environment. Genetic diversity arises from three sources: during the formation of sperm and egg, crossing over between homologous chromosomes occurs during meiosis, producing non-identical sex cells (sperm and ova); random mutations, inversions and deletions can also occur, altering the genetic code; finally, the process of fertilization is random, in that any given sperm can fertilize the egg....Show more

Sherita Gallati: Does it really ensure the fitness of the human race. All mammals utilize sex! ual reproduction rather asexual reproduction. This ensures better genetic diversity which generally helps the species. Other than that I don't know how the male and female reproductive organs ensure fitness of the human race.

Barrett Zheng: While I agree with Andy that this is a vague question, I have to disagree with his sentence:"Human beings have evolved to be sexually reproducing organisms. "That's a bit like saying that "human beings have evolved to be vertebrates" or "human beings have evolved to be multicellular organisms."In other words, the wording implies that humans were once asexually reproducing, but then "evolved to be sexually reproducing" ... which is of course, quite incorrect. (I am sure Andy did not mean to imply that ... but since this question is already confused enough by imprecise language, we need to be extra precise with the language of our answers.)Human beings come from a long, long, long line of sexually reproducing organisms. Sexual ! reproduction came before the arrival of the vertebrates 500 mi! llion years ago. Sexual reproduction even came before multicellularity 1 billion years ago. So the wording of the question is bizarre. The male and female reproductive systems did NOT evolve "to insure [sic] the fitness of the human race" ... any more than it evolved to ensure the fitness of the chimp race or the Neanderthal race or the squirrel race or the wooly mammoth race. So the question could be asking one of the following:A. How did the male and female reproductive systems in humans, help improve the fitness of human beings to their environment? or ...B. How did the development of male and female reproductive systems, help improve the fitness of those sexually reproducing organisms that had them? or ...C. How does the existence of sexual reproduction help improve the fitness of organisms such as human beings?In other words, it is not clear if this is specifically about *human* reproduction, in which case we need to get into the more detailed issues of how hum! an reproduction is different from other mammals, and even primates ... or a general question about male and female reproductive systems *in general* (keeping in mind that many sexually reproducing organisms do not have separate males and females) ... or a question about sexual reproduction in general, and how it drives fitness.Sorry, I'm not trying to be nitpicky. I'm pointing out that the question as asked, makes no sense.(And no, I'm not talking about "insure" vs. "ensure." ... I figure that's just a typo.)...Show more

Valentine Willinger: Well- as Darwin's theory goes, the survival of the fittest - hence if all the fittest men mated with all the fittest women, then each generation of children would be more fit than the prior.