Reproductive Behaviour

reproductive behaviour, any activity directed toward perpetuation of a species. The enormous range of animal reproductive modes is matched by the variety of reproductive behaviour.

Reproductive behaviour in animals includes all the events and actions that are directly involved in the process by which an organism generates at least one replacement of itself. In an evolutionary sense, the goal of an individual in reproduction is not to perpetuate the population or the species; rather, relative to the other members of its population, it is to maximize the representation of its own genetic characteristics in the next generation. The dominant form of reproductive behaviour for achieving this purpose is sexual rather than asexual, although it is easier mechanically for an organism simply to divide into two or more individuals. Even many of the organisms that do exactly this—and they are not all the so-called primitive forms—every so often intersperse their normal asexual pattern with sexual reproduction.