Love Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Adaptive benefit=== Interpersonal love between a man and woman provides an evolutionary adaptive benefit since it facilitates mating and [[sexual reproduction]].<ref name = Michod1989>{{cite journal|last=Michod|first=Richard E.|title=What's love got to do with it? The solution to one of evolution's greatest riddles|journal=The Sciences|year=1989|pages=22β27|doi=10.1002/j.2326-1951.1989.tb02156.x}}</ref> However, some organisms can reproduce [[asexual reproduction|asexually]] without mating. Understanding the adaptive benefit of interpersonal love depends on understanding the adaptive benefit of sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual reproduction. Richard Michod reviewed evidence that love, and consequently sexual reproduction, provides two major adaptive advantages.{{r|Michod1989}} First, sexual reproduction facilitates [[DNA repair|repair of damages in the DNA]] that is passed from parent to progeny (during [[origin and function of meiosis|meiosis]], a key stage of the sexual process). Second, a gene in either parent may contain a harmful [[mutation]], but in the progeny produced by sexual reproduction, expression of a harmful mutation introduced by one parent is likely to be masked by expression of the unaffected homologous gene from the other parent.{{r|Michod1989}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page