» Articles » PMID: 18373660

Moving to Mate: the Evolution of Separate and Combined Sexes in Multicellular Organisms

Overview
Journal J Evol Biol
Specialty Biology
Date 2008 Apr 1
PMID 18373660
Citations 18
Authors
Affiliations
Soon will be listed here.
Abstract

Which conditions favour the evolution of hermaphroditism or separate sexes? One classical hypothesis states that an organism's mode of locomotion (if any) when searching for a mate should influence breeding system evolution. We used published phylogenies to reconstruct evolutionary changes in adult mate-search efficiency and breeding systems among multicellular organisms. Employing maximum-likelihood analyses, we found that changes in adult mate-search efficiency are significantly correlated with changes in breeding system, and this result is robust to uncertainties in the phylogenies. These data provide the first statistical support, across a broad range of taxa, for the hypothesis that breeding systems and mate-search efficiency did not evolve independently. We discuss our results in context with other causal factors, such as inbreeding avoidance and sexual specialization, likely to affect breeding system evolution.

Citing Articles

Hermaphroditic origins of anisogamy.

Henshaw J, Bittlingmaier M, Scharer L Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2023; 378(1876):20220283.

PMID: 36934747 PMC: 10024982. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0283.


Trioecy is maintained as a time-stable mating system in the pink sea urchin Toxopneustes roseus from the Mexican Pacific.

Diaz-Martinez J, Mejia-Gutierrez L, Islas-Villanueva V, Benitez-Villalobos F Sci Rep. 2022; 12(1):21408.

PMID: 36496463 PMC: 9741619. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-26059-4.


Macroevolutionary patterns in marine hermaphroditism.

Jarvis G, White C, Marshall D Evolution. 2022; 76(12):3014-3025.

PMID: 36199199 PMC: 10091813. DOI: 10.1111/evo.14639.


Switches, stability and reversals in the evolutionary history of sexual systems in fish.

Pla S, Benvenuto C, Capellini I, Piferrer F Nat Commun. 2022; 13(1):3029.

PMID: 35637181 PMC: 9151764. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30419-z.


Strategic pheromone signalling by mate searching females of the sexually cannibalistic spider .

Weiss K, Schneider J R Soc Open Sci. 2022; 9(1):211806.

PMID: 35116167 PMC: 8767209. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211806.