AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Answer and Explanation: The answer is C. Mitosis of fertilized eggs. Mitosis of fertilized eggs is not a source of genetic variation.

Detailed explanation-2: -Genetic variation is introduced in multiple ways, including changes in mitosis, crossing over and random orientation in meiosis, and random fertilization.

Detailed explanation-3: -Meiosis is important for creating genomic diversity in a species. It accomplishes this primarily through 2 processes: independent assortment and crossing over (recombination).

Detailed explanation-4: -Mitosis is a type of cell division in which the original cell makes a duplicate copy. If this were the only form of cell division, the production of genetic diversity would be limited to mutations.

Detailed explanation-5: -Genetic variation can be caused by mutation (which can create entirely new alleles in a population), random mating, random fertilization, and recombination between homologous chromosomes during meiosis (which reshuffles alleles within an organism’s offspring).