Dioecious plant

Dioecy (; ; adj. dioecious , ) is a characteristic of a species, meaning that it has distinct individual organisms (unisexual) that produce male or female gametes, either directly (in animals) or indirectly (in seed plants). Dioecious reproduction is biparental reproduction. Dioecy has costs, since only about half the population directly produces offspring. It is one method for excluding self-fertilization and promoting allogamy (outcrossing), and thus tends to reduce the expression of recessive deleterious mutations present in a population. Plants have several other methods of preventing self-fertilization including, for example, dichogamy, herkogamy, and self-incompatibility.

Dioecy is a dimorphic sexual system, alongside gynodioecy and androdioecy.

In zoology

In zoology, dioecious species may be opposed to hermaphroditic species, meaning that an individual is either male or female, in which case the synonym gonochory is more often used. Most animal species are dioecious (gonochoric). Dioecy may also describe colonies within a species, such as the colonies of Siphonophorae (Portuguese man-of-war), which may be either dioecious or monoecious.

In botany

Land plants (embryophytes) differ from animals in that their life cycle involves alternation of generations. In animals, typically an individual produces haploid gametes of one kind, either sperms or egg cells. A sperm and an egg cell fuse to form a zygote that develops into a new individual. In land plants, by contrast, one generation – the sporophyte generation – consists of individuals that produce haploid spores rather than haploid gametes. Spores do not fuse, but germinate by dividing repeatedly by mitosis to give rise to haploid multicellular individuals which produce gametes – the gametophyte generation. A male gamete and a female gamete then fuse to produce a new diploid sporophyte. Sexual dimorphism is common in dioecious plants.

In bryophytes ( mosses, liverworts and hornworts), the gametophytes are fully independent plants, and produce spores of only one type (isospores). Seed plants (spermatophytes), are heterosporic, producing spores of two different sizes (heterospores). Seed plant gametophytes are dependent on the sporophyte and develop within the spores, a condition known as endospory. In flowering plants, the male gametophytes develop within pollen grains produced by the sporophyte's stamens, and the female gametophytes develop within ovules produced by the sporophyte's carpels.

The sporophyte generation of a seed plant is called " monoecious" when each sporophyte plant has both kinds of spore-producing organ, so ultimately produces both male and female gametophytes and hence both male and female gametes. For example, a single flowering plant of a monoecious species has both functional stamens and carpels, either in separate flowers or in the same flower.

The sporophyte generation of seed plants is called " dioecious" when each sporophyte plant has only one kind of spore-producing organ, all of whose spores give rise either to male gametophytes, which produce only male gametes (sperm), or to female gametophytes, which produce only female gametes (egg cells). For example, a single flowering plant sporophyte of a fully dioecious species has either flowers with functional stamens producing pollen containing male gametes (staminate or 'male' flowers), or flowers with functional carpels producing female gametes (carpellate or 'female' flowers), but not both. (See Plant reproductive morphology for further details, including more complex cases.)

Slightly different terms, ''dioicous'' and ''monoicous'', may be used for the gametophyte generation, although ''dioecious'' and ''monoecious'' are also used. A dioicous gametophyte either produces only male gametes (sperm) or produces only female gametes (egg cells). About 60% of liverworts are dioicous.

Dioecy occurs in a wide variety of plant groups. Examples of dioecious plant species include ginkgos, willows, cannabis and African teak. As its specific name implies, the perennial stinging nettle ''Urtica dioica'' is dioecious, while the annual nettle ''Urtica urens'' is monoecious. Dioecious flora are predominant in tropical environments.

About 65% of gymnosperm species are dioecious, but almost all conifers are monoecious.
In gymnosperms, the sexual systems dioecy and monoecy are strongly correlated with the mode of pollen dispersal, monoecious species are predominantly wind dispersed ( anemophily) and dioecious species animal-dispersed (zoophily).

About 6 percent of flowering plant species are entirely dioecious and about 7% of angiosperm genera contain some dioecious species. Dioecy is more common in woody plants, and heterotrophic species. In most dioecious plants, whether male or female gametophytes are produced is determined genetically, but in some cases it can be determined by the environment, as in ''Arisaema'' species.

Certain algae are dioecious. Dioecy is prevalent in the brown algae ( Phaeophyceae) and may have been the ancestral state in that group.

Evolution of dioecy

In plants, dioecy has evolved independently multiple times generally either from hermaphroditic species or from monoecious species. A previously untested hypothesis is that this reduces inbreeding. However dioecy has been shown to be associated with increased genetic diversity and greater protection against deleterious mutations. Regardless of the evolutionary pathway the intermediate states need to have fitness advantages compared to cosexual flowers in order to survive.

Dioecy evolves due to male or female sterility, although it is unlikely that mutations for male and female sterility occurred at the same time. In angiosperms unisexual flowers evolve from bisexual ones. Dioecy occurs in almost half of plant families, but only in a minority of genera, suggesting recent evolution. For 160 families that have dioecious species, dioecy is thought to have evolved more than 100 times.

In the family Caricaceae dioecy is likely the ancestral sexual system.

From monoecy

Dioecious flowering plants can evolve from monoecious ancestors that have flowers containing both functional stamens and functional carpels. Some authors argue monoecy and dioecy are related.

In the genus ''Sagittaria

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