The organism that reproduce sexually invest resources (cost of rearing and supporting throughout life) in both male and female individuals and it seems an extra cost on male counterpart. If they start to reproduce asexually then an extra cost on male counterpart will be exempted and population also increase in twice.
Sexual reproduction is an alternative way to reproduce, that, as you said has it's costs, but also it's benefits, mainly related to highter variability, that can asure that natural selection have more options to act and allows the population to change between adaptive peaks in the fitness landscape.
In changing environments/arms races - this can be not only an add, but a necessary feature for the evolution and adaptation of a species.
There are interesting evidence on organisms (e.g. Scorpiones) that shift from assexual to sexual reproduction when the survival/reproduction conditions are thougher, and changes back to assexual when things went back to the usual selective pressures, allowing growth of the population.
You can find something related here:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_sex_common
You can find a model simulating the change of the probability of sexual vs. asexual development in respond to environmental change in this paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255170953_Viscous_populations_evolve_altruistic_programmed_aging_in_ability_conflict_in_a_changing_environment
Article Viscous populations evolve altruistic programmed ageing in a...
Dear Jiang-Nan Yang and Daniel Casali,
Do yo have any research paper about the methods reproduction in insects in addition to direct and indirect methods .
Many species use both sexual and asexual reproduction strategies in different times of their life histories. As was mentioned before, while sexual reproduction is more costly, it produces crossing over and other phenomena that produces offspring with different characteristics. This is the kind of reproduction some organisms use when faced with unfavourable environmental conditions. However, when conditions are stable and optimal, many organisms use asexual reproduction for greater efficiency in replication. Algae, crustaceans, insects and many invertebrates use this strategy.
Other possibility, as used by fish, is sequential hermaphorditism, in which all offspring is male, and as they grow, they become females. This way there is no extra cost for sexual reproduction.
Dear Juan Molina,
Wolbachia pipientis is an endosymbiont which is very commonly found in insects, crustaceans, mites and filarial nematodes. This endosymbiont has large scale of host manupulations: parthenogenesis induction, feminization and male killing.
Is there any role of symbionts in sequential hermaphoroditism as you mentioned in fish. ?
Not known at least. It's induced by hormone production at a certain age. You can induce sex change in many fish that don't do it naturally, by providing this hormone. Its a rather conservative feature of vertebrates, as its almost the same hormones some people use for sex change.
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