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Heterospory is the production of spores of two different sizes and sexes by the sporophytes of land plants. The smaller of these, the microspore , is male and the larger megaspore is female. Heterospory evolved during the Devonian period from isospory independently in several plant groups: the clubmosses , the ferns including the arborescent ...
Spores of two distinct sizes (heterospory or anisospory): larger megaspores and smaller microspores. When the two kinds of spore are produced in different kinds of sporangia, these are called megasporangia and microsporangia. A megaspore often (but not always) develops at the expense of the other three cells resulting from meiosis, which abort.
During the Devonian period several plant groups independently evolved heterospory and subsequently the habit of endospory, in which the gametophytes develop in miniaturized form inside the spore wall. By contrast in exosporous plants, including modern ferns, the gametophytes break the spore wall open on germination and develop outside it.
Archaeopteris is a member of a group of free-sporing woody plants called the progymnosperms that are interpreted as distant ancestors of the gymnosperms. Archaeopteris reproduced by releasing spores rather than by producing seeds, but some of the species, such as Archaeopteris halliana were heterosporous, producing two types of spores.
There is debate as to whether endospory or heterospory evolved first. Some debate centers upon the requirement of endospory to develop before heterospory. [2] Endospory is assumed to follow heterospory but it has been suggested that without endospory, early plant species dependency on water fertilization and environmental impacts on gametophytic gene expression would have reduced the chances ...
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Salviniales are all aquatic and differ from all other ferns in being heterosporous, meaning that they produce two different types of spore (megaspores and microspores) that develop into two different types of gametophyte (female and male gametophytes, respectively), and in that their gametophytes are endosporic, meaning that they never grow outside the spore wall and cannot become larger than ...
While heterospory is the norm among all plants with seeds, such as the flowering plants and conifers, it is very rare among other groups of plants. Also, most heterosporous plants produce their two kinds of sporangia in different places on the plant.