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Such constraints are absent from wind-pollinated plants, and the contrasting biophysical requirements for pollen dispersal and pollen capture have led to striking cases of sexual dimorphism in plant architecture and flower production in some species. [4] Below are some specific examples of sexual dimorphisms in flowering plants.
Parthenogenesis is the growth and development of embryo or seed without fertilization. Parthenogenesis occurs naturally in some species, including lower plants (where it is called apomixis), invertebrates (e.g. water fleas, aphids, some bees and parasitic wasps), and vertebrates (e.g. some reptiles, [3] some fish, [4] and very rarely, domestic ...
External fertilization is a mode of reproduction in which a male organism's sperm fertilizes a female organism's egg outside of the female's body. [1] It is contrasted with internal fertilization , in which sperm are introduced via insemination and then combine with an egg inside the body of a female organism.
Over time amphibians have been found evolving to increasing internal fertilization. [citation needed] Within amphibians, it is common for high vertebrates to internally fertilize because of the transition from water to land during vertebrate evolution. There is an advantage for the amphibians who are internally fertilizing allowing for the ...
Allogamy ordinarily involves cross-fertilization between unrelated individuals leading to the masking of deleterious recessive alleles in progeny. [11] [12] By contrast, close inbreeding, including self-fertilization in plants and automictic parthenogenesis in hymenoptera, tends to lead to the harmful expression of deleterious recessive alleles (inbreeding depression).
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.
In plants, individual flowers are called dichogamous if their function has the two sexes separated in time, although the plant as a whole may have functionally male and functionally female flowers open at any one moment. A flower is protogynous if its function is first female, then male, and protandrous if its function is first male then female.
The ZW sex-determination system is a chromosomal system that determines the sex of offspring in birds, some fish and crustaceans such as the giant river prawn, some insects (including butterflies and moths), the schistosome family of flatworms, and some reptiles, e.g. majority of snakes, lacertid lizards and monitors, including Komodo dragons.