Gametes and sexual spores

Question

What is the basic difference between gametes and sexual spores? Do humans exist sexual spores or gametes?

Answer 1

Sexual spores are structures produced from meiosis with ploidy (that is, number of chromosomes) decrease to a half compared to the spore mother cell.

Spores germinate and provide existence to gametophytes, individuals that by mitosis make gametes. The meiosis which produces sexual spores is termed as sporic meiosis; it is, for instance, the kind of meiosis which takes place in plants.

Gametes are as well cells with half the number of chromosomes of the normal cell of the species, however they are specialized in fecundation, the fusion with other gamete which produces the zygote, a cell with double number of chromosomes than gametic cells.

Gametes can emerge from gametic meiosis or by mitosis in the gametophytes originated from sexual spores. In humans as well in most of animals the meiosis is gametic. There are neither spores nor modification of generations. The male gamete is the sperm cell, and the female gamete is an egg cell.