Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Plants may either self-pollinate or cross-pollinate. In 2013, flowers dating from the Cretaceous (100 million years before present) were found encased in amber, the oldest evidence of sexual reproduction in a flowering plant. Microscopic images showed tubes growing out of pollen and penetrating the flower's stigma.
At least three aspects of flowers appear to have coevolved between flowering plants and insects, because they involve communication between these organisms. Firstly, flowers communicate with their pollinators by scent; insects use this scent to determine how far away a flower is, to approach it, and to identify where to land and finally to feed.
Sexual selection is a common concept in animal evolution but, with plants, it is often overlooked because many plants are hermaphrodites. Flowering plants show many characteristics that are often sexually selected for. For example, flower symmetry, nectar production, floral structure, and inflorescences are just a few of the many secondary sex ...
In a form of reciprocal evolution humans have influenced these plants as much as the plants have influenced the people that consume them, is known as coevolution. [21] Selective plant breeding is also used in research to produce transgenic animals that breed "true" (i.e., are homozygous) for artificially inserted or deleted genes. [22]
Plant reproduction is the production of new offspring in plants, which can be accomplished by sexual or asexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction produces offspring by the fusion of gametes, resulting in offspring genetically different from either parent.
About 10–15% of flowering plants are predominantly self-fertilizing. [9] Self-pollination is an example of autogamy that occurs in flowering plants. Self-pollination occurs when the sperm in the pollen from the stamen of a plant goes to the carpels of that same plant and fertilizes the egg cell present.
The primary mating systems in plants are outcrossing (cross-fertilisation), autogamy (self-fertilisation) and apomixis (asexual reproduction without fertilization, but only when arising by modification of sexual function). Mixed mating systems, in which plants use two or even all three mating systems, are not uncommon. [1]
In both plants and animals, gamete size difference is the fundamental difference between females and males. [2] Anisogamy most likely evolved from isogamy. [3] Since the biological definition of male and female is based on gamete size, the evolution of anisogamy is viewed as the evolutionary origin of male and female sexes.