abstract:The "Vicar of Bray" is the name given to a hypothesis attempting to explain why sexual reproduction might be favoured over asexual reproduction, in which sexual populations are able to outcompete asexual populations because they evolve more rapidly in response to environmental changes. The offspring of a population of sexually reproducing individuals will show a more varied selection of phenotypes and that they will therefore be more likely to produce a strain that can survive a change in the ecology of the environment in which they live.