Gametes are produced through the process of meiosis. Meiosis is a special type of cell division that occurs in the reproductive cells of organisms. During meiosis, the parent cell divides twice, resulting in four daughter cells, each with half the number of chromosomes as the parent cell. This reduction in the number of chromosomes is important because when the gametes from two parents fuse during fertilization, the resulting zygote will have the correct number of chromosomes for the species. Therefore, meiosis is the process that allows sexual reproduction to occur and leads to genetic variation in offspring.