Q.Give a detailed account of the events of meiosis II, and explain why the overall two-division process of meiosis is described as a 'reduction division' even though meiosis II itself closely resembles an ordinary mitotic division.

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Meiosis II resembles mitosis (sister chromatids separate) but acts on already-haploid cells; the halving happened earlier, in meiosis I, which is why the overall process is a reduction division. …

Meiosis II is the second of the two divisions of meiosis, following meiosis I directly without any intervening round of DNA replication -- the two haploid cells produced by meiosis I proceed straight into meiosis II carrying chromosomes that are already duplicated (each still consisting of two sister chromatids) from the single replication event that occurred long before meiosis I began.

In prophase II, the chromosomes, which may have partly decondensed during the brief interkinesis interval, recondense, and a new spindle apparatus forms independently within each of the two haploid cells. In metaphase II, the chromosomes -- now single, unpaired chromosomes, since homologous pairing was already resolved back in meiosis I -- line up individually at the equatorial plate of each cell, exactly as in an ordinary mitotic metaphase. In anaphase II, the centromere joining the two sister chromatids of each chromosome finally splits, and the separated chromatids move to the two opposite poles of each cell. In telophase II, the two new chromosome sets decondense and nuclear envelopes re-form, after which cytokinesis divides each of the two cells into two, yielding four daughter cells in all from the one original diploid parent cell. …

First describe meiosis II's four stages, noting the parallel to mitosis; then explicitly separate out WHICH of the two meiotic divisions actually performs the chromosome-number reduc …

Assuming meiosis II ALSO halves the chromosome number (since it is part of 'reduction division') -- the halving happens only once, at ana …