 Let's explore asexual reproduction in simple organisms. The first one is fission. Fission refers to cell division. You may ask, how is cell division reproduction? Well, if you have unicellular organisms, then their cell division itself gives you multiple cells and that itself gives you reproduction. So in unicellular organisms like amoeba, lechmania, plasmodium, the one causes malaria, when they divide, the cells divide, that itself is reproduction. Now there are some organisms like amoeba and lechmania. In them, when fission happens, you get two new individuals. So we call this binary fission. Binary stands for two. But in cases like plasmodium, you get multiple new organisms. So in this case, you call it multiple fission. So that's what happens for unicellular organisms. What happens for multicellular ones? Well, if you consider spirogera, a simple multicellular being, then it uses what we call fragmentation to reproduce. When it's ready to reproduce, what happens is it just breaks into tiny tiny pieces, which we call fragments. And then each of that fragment can grow into a whole new spirogera. And this process where the individual fragment grows into a new being, we give a name, it's called regeneration. So fragmentation and regeneration is a simple process, a reproductive process for simple multicellular organisms. Now there are beings like say planaria and starfish, which can also regenerate. If you cut it, each piece will grow into a new planaria. If you cut this, this piece will grow into a new starfish. You have two starfishes then. But the difference between them and spirogera is, spirogera prefers to do this. That's its main mode of reproduction. But planaria and starfishes, they don't prefer it. They have other ways of reproducing. But if they do get chopped up like this, then they can regenerate as well. And then there are other beings like say lizard, house lizard if you consider. If you chop off its tail, then it can regenerate a new tail. But this is by no means reproduction because this chopped off tail cannot grow into a new lizard. So you see, depending upon which beings you consider, regeneration has its limits. In some cases you can grow new individuals, but in some cases you can only grow limbs. And in very simple multicellular organisms, fragmenting and then regenerating is the preferred method of reproduction. But there are even more ways. If you consider hydras and yeast and other organisms like these, they prefer what we call budding. What happens over here is a new organism starts growing like a small bud starts growing from the original, which we call the parent this time. It grows and grows and once it has grown enough, it detaches from the parent organism and you have a new hydra over here. The same thing happens over here. You can see a new bud that has grown from this yeast parent and then finally when it grows enough, it detaches and then that grows into a new yeast individual. Do you see the big difference here? Here the parent gets divided fragments into multiple small pieces and then each of these small pieces grow into a new being. Whereas over here, there is no fragmentation, but a new being starts developing from the original parent body, which we call the bud, and then that grows and then eventually detaches. Amazing, isn't it? But that's not it. There is another way in which organisms can reproduce is actually and that is by forming spores. If you take bread mold, which is also called a rhizopus, it has two parts. The stem like part is called the hyphae and then there is this bulb like part over here, which is called the sporangia. It's called so because it contains tiny, tiny spores in them. These spores have a very thick cell wall that protects them initially, but when it comes in contact with some moist surface, it starts growing into a new individual. And that's basically how the mold grows in your bread, for example. And that's why we try to avoid moist surfaces. Wherever there are moist surfaces, either sometimes on the wall or sometimes in food, you know, the bold can easily grow and they do that via spore formation.