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Modern heterosporous plants such as many ferns exhibit endospory, in which a megagametophyte is fertilized by a microgametophyte all while still inside the spore wall, gaining nutrients from the inside of spore. [6] Both heterospory and endospory seem to be one of the many precursors to seed plants and the ovary.
The entire gametophyte generation, with the sole exception of pollen grains (microgametophytes), is contained within the sporophyte. The life cycle of a dioecious flowering plant (angiosperm), the willow, has been outlined in some detail in an earlier section (A complex life cycle). The life cycle of a gymnosperm is similar.
Early land plants had sporophytes that produced identical spores (isosporous or homosporous) but the ancestors of the gymnosperms evolved complex heterosporous life cycles in which the spores producing male and female gametophytes were of different sizes, the female megaspores tending to be larger, and fewer in number, than the male microspores ...
Plants with heterosporous life cycles using microspores and megaspores arose independently in several plant groups during the Devonian period. [2] Microspores are haploid , and are produced from diploid microsporocytes by meiosis .
Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, fungi and protozoa. [2] They were thought to have appeared as early as the mid-late Ordovician period as an adaptation of early land plants. [3] Bacterial spores are not part of a sexual cycle, but are resistant structures used for survival under unfavourable conditions. [4]
Most heterosporous plants there are two kinds of sporangia, termed microsporangia and megasporangia. Sporangia (clustered in sori) on a fern leaf Equisetum arvense strobilus cut open to reveal sporangia. Sporangia can be terminal (on the tips) or lateral (placed along the side) of stems or associated with leaves.
Sporogenesis is the production of spores in biology.The term is also used to refer to the process of reproduction via spores. Reproductive spores were found to be formed in eukaryotic organisms, such as plants, algae and fungi, during their normal reproductive life cycle.
Marsileaceae (/ m ɑːr ˌ s ɪ l i ˈ eɪ s i. iː /) is a small family of heterosporous aquatic and semi-aquatic ferns, though at first sight they do not physically resemble other ferns. The group is commonly known as the "pepperwort family" or as the "water-clover family" because the leaves of the genus Marsilea superficially resemble the ...