Why was sexual reproduction a success?

[sebasp]

There are currently 3 types of reasons for which sexual reproduction has proliferated: 1. Sex helps in the diffusion of advantageous characters. 2. Sex helps eliminate harmful genes. 3 Sex creates combinations of genes that may be more apt than the previous ones. Will the reason for sexual reproduction be universal or will it depend on the species?

[Area54]

One would expect that the relative importance of these influences would be contingent on a wide variety of factors, including the species. I imagine some work has been done on this. Have you looked at potentially relevant research papers?