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The Evolution of Sex Determination in Plants

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Evolutionary Developmental Biology

Abstract

Separate sexes, i.e., the presence of male and female individuals in a species (= dioecy), do exist in flowering plants, despite being much less common than in animals. How becoming a male or a female (= sex determination) is achieved in dioecious plants is much less understood than it is in animals. On one hand, phylogenetic, ecological, and theoretical population genetics studies have provided a lot of information on what could be the evolutionary routes from hermaphroditism, the assumed ancestral sexual system in angiosperms, to dioecy, and what could be the genetics and the selective forces driving the evolution of males and females. On the other hand, genetic, molecular, and developmental data are scarce. Sex chromosomes have been described in a few dioecious species, and very recently two master sex-determining genes have been identified. We review here the theoretical findings on the evolution of dioecy and sex determination in plants and also discuss recent work on the genetics of the evolution of dioecy and on the molecular characterization of the first master sex-determining genes found in plants.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Jos Käfer and Editor Charlie Scutt for comments and suggestions for improving this manuscript. We apologize to all colleagues whom work could not be cited due to number of references restrictions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive (UMR 5558), Université Lyon 1, CNRS, F-69622 Cedex, Villeurbanne, France

    Cécile Fruchard & Gabriel A. B. Marais

Authors
  1. Cécile Fruchard
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  2. Gabriel A. B. Marais
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gabriel A. B. Marais .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The KLI Institute, Klosterneuburg, Austria

    Laura Nuno de la Rosa

  2. The KLI Institute, Klosterneuburg, Austria

    Gerd Müller

Section Editor information

  1. Laboratoire de Reproduction et Développement des Plantes, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Lyon, France

    Charles P. Scutt

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Fruchard, C., Marais, G.A.B. (2017). The Evolution of Sex Determination in Plants. In: Nuno de la Rosa, L., Müller, G. (eds) Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33038-9_168-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33038-9_168-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-33038-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-33038-9

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