How are the stages of meiosis different from the stages of mitosis?
In meiosis, the diploid (two copies) cell goes through two stages of division, leaving four haploid (one copy) sex cells, which alone, would not evolve into a full organism, since it only has half of the necessary DNA. The phases are in the same order in both processes (pro, meta, ana, telo), only in Prophase I the homologous chromosomes pair and cross over, and during splitting, DNA is copied only once over two divisions, leaving four sex-cells out of the original one. (If you want to think in simple terms, it does the stages of mitosis first then each cell splits in half without copying afterward – not quite the case, but close enough for a high-school biology class).
