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by 360walk
2076 days ago
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He addresses both of those in the article: Schizophyllum: Some species have many hundreds of these ‘mating types’, and newspapers often report research into this phenomenon under headlines such as: ‘Scientists discover species with hundreds of sexes!’ But, formally, biologists refer to these as ‘mating types’, and reserve the term ‘sexes’ for gametes that are different in size and structure. Why distinguish between these two phenomena? One reason is that the evolution of anisogamy – gametes that differ in size and structure – explains the later evolution of sex chromosomes, sex-associated physical characteristics and much more. But the existence of mating types doesn’t have these dramatic knock-on evolutionary effects. Intersex: Many people assume that if there are only two sexes, that means everyone must fall into one of them. But the biological definition of sex doesn’t imply that at all. As well as simultaneous hermaphrodites, which are both male and female, sequential hermaphrodites are first one sex and then the other. There are also individual organisms that are neither male nor female. The biological definition of sex is not based on an essential quality that every organism is born with, but on two distinct strategies that organisms use to propagate their genes. They are not born with the ability to use these strategies – they acquire that ability as they grow up, a process which produces endless variation between individuals. The biology of sex tries to classify and explain these many systems for combining DNA to make new organisms. That can be done without assigning every individual to a sex, and we will see that trying to do so quickly leads to asking questions that have no biological meaning. |
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