2ND MAIN CONCEPT. “The second major hypothesis is that separate sexes evolve as a means to avoid self-fertilization, which can produce low-fitness offspring because of the exposure of recessive deleterious alleles (“inbreeding depression”). Empirical evidence for inbreeding depression is widespread in animals and plants; for instance, in the Hawaiian endemic plant genus Scheidia, high inbreeding depression promotes the evolution of dioecy.”
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001899
linkedin post 2022-06-29 05:12:48
Nigel Fleming
September 21, 2022