Inheritance of Sex. In Mercurialis Annua

Cited by 32 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…And second, patterns of phenotypic variation in hermaphroditic sex allocation (Pannell, 1997a, b;Pannell et al, 2014) and the results of selection experiments on pollen production Dorken and Pannell, 2009) suggest that male function in hermaphrodites is a quantitative trait for which many loci are probably responsible, rather than a single male-sterility mutation. Indeed, females of dioecious M. annua occasionally produce small numbers of staminate flowers with fully viable pollen (Yampolsky, 1919), suggesting incomplete suppression of a male function in XX individuals, and this tendency also seems to be a quantitative trait (G. Cossard and J.R. Pannell, unpublished data). Such leakiness in the expression of gender is very common in dioecious species, especially those derived from monoecy where male and female functions can be leaky (Lloyd, 1980;Lloyd and Bawa, 1984;Delph, 2003;Ehlers and Bataillon, 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex determination in dioecious Mercurialis annua and its close diploid and polyploid relatives

Russell

Pannell

2014

Heredity

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Separate sexes have evolved on numerous independent occasions from hermaphroditic ancestors in flowering plants. The mechanisms of sex determination is known for only a handful of such species, but, in those that have been investigated, it usually involves alleles segregating at a single locus, sometimes on heteromorphic sex chromosomes. In the genus Mercurialis, transitions between combined (hermaphroditism) and separate sexes (dioecy or androdioecy, where males co-occur with hermaphrodites rather than females) have occurred more than once in association with hybridisation and shifts in ploidy. Previous work has pointed to an unusual 3-locus system of sex determination in dioecious populations. Here, we use crosses and genotyping for a sex-linked marker to reject this model: sex in diploid dioecious M. annua is determined at a single locus with a dominant male-determining allele (an XY system). We also crossed individuals among lineages of Mercurialis that differ in their ploidy and sexual system to ascertain the extent to which the same sex-determination system has been conserved following genome duplication, hybridisation and transitions between dioecy and hermaphroditism. Our results indicate that the maledetermining element is fully capable of determining gender in the progeny of hybrids between different lineages. Specifically, males crossed with females or hermaphrodites always generate 1:1 male:female or male:hermaphrodite sex ratios, respectively, regardless of the ploidy levels involved (diploid, tetraploid or hexaploid). Our results throw further light on the genetics of the remarkable variation in sexual systems in the genus Mercurialis. They also illustrate the almost identical expression of sexdetermining alleles in terms of sexual phenotypes across multiple divergent backgrounds, including those that have lost separate sexes altogether.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex determination in dioecious Mercurialis annua and its close diploid and polyploid relatives

Russell

Pannell

2014

Heredity

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“…The annual species of the genus Mercurialis continue to provide an exceptional model system for study of the evolution and maintenance of combined versus sexual sexes (Camerarius 1694;Yampolsky 1919;Durand andDurand 1985, 1991;Pannell 1997a;Krähenbü hl et al 2002;Pannell et al 2004;Khadka et al 2005). They join ranks with only a handful of species in which both dioecy and functional hermaphroditism occur in a single species complex (e.g., Costich and Meagher 1992;Dorken and Barrett 2003;Case and Barrett 2004), and they present one of the very few examples of androdioecy, a potential intermediate path between sex-allocation extremes (Charlesworth and Charlesworth 1978).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybridization, Polyploidy, and the Evolution of Sexual Systems in Mercurialis (Euphorbiaceae)

Obbard

Buggs

Pannell

2006

Evol

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Hybridization and polyploidy are widely believed to be important sources of evolutionary novelty in plant evolution. Both can lead to novel gene combinations and/or novel patterns of gene expression, which in turn provide the variation on which natural selection can act. Here, we use nuclear and plastid gene trees, in conjunction with morphological data and genome size measurements, to show that both processes have been important in shaping the evolution of the angiosperm genus Mercurialis, particularly a clade of annual lineages that shows exceptional variation in the sexual system. Our results indicate that hexaploid populations of M. annua, in which the rare sexual system androdioecy is common (the occurrence of males and hermaphrodites) is of allopolyploid origin involving hybridization between an autotetraploid lineage of M. annua and the related diploid species M. huetii. We discuss the possibility that androdioecy may have evolved as a result of hybridization between dioecious M. huetii and monoecious tetraploid M. annua, an event that brought together the genes for specialist males with those for hermaphrodites.

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“…The writer has not attempted to give a review of the literature on sex inheritance and sex determination .n plants, since this -has recently been done rather comprehensively by Yampolsky (8,9,10).…”

Section: The Sex Determinersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Inheritance of Flower Types and Fertility in the Strawberry

Valleau¹

1923

American J of Botany

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In a study of sterility in the strawberry begun by the writer in 1914, a portion of the work was directed toward determining the underlying factors causing "nubbins" or imperfectly developed berries. These are commonly produced from the tertiary and later flowers of the inflorescence of many cultivated varieties of strawberry and result in considerable loss of fruit toward the close of the picking season.A study of the fruiting habit of the wild American strawberries mid of the cultivated varieties proves conclusively that the production of nubbins is directly related to pistil sterility, and that pistil sterility is decidedly more prevalent on plants with certain flower types than on others (7). Therefore, since the question of fruitfulness in the strawberry is primarily one of sex, a thorough knowledge of the flower types and of their inheritance is essential to the strawberry breeder if his work is to be other than blind crossing and selecting for chance high-yielding clones.The work on the inheritance of flower types in the strawberry has been discontinued by the writer, but, as some facts have been determined, he presents the data obtained and the conclusions drawn from them. FLOWER TYPES IN THE STRAWBERRYIn the cultivated strawberry, pistillate and perfect flowers are commonly encountered. The pistillate flowers bear small abortive stamens which have never been observed by the writer to produce pollen. The pistils are generally very fertile, producing perfect fruits from most of'the flowers and comparatively few nubbins. The perfect-flowered varieties develop anthers which produce varying amounts of normal pollen. As a class, these varieties are less fertile than the pistillate varieties and produce a higher percentage of nubbins and of sterile or male flowers (7).The wild species of American strawberries may be divided into two types: those which bear only perfect flowers, as Fragaria americana, and those which are dioecious. The pistils of the former species are very fertile, and nubbins or sterile flowers are seldom seen. The dioecious types produce pistillate plants and plants which apparently are hermaphrodites but are in fact staminates. The pistils of the pistillate clones are usually fertile, but the pistils of the staminate clones are rarely so, and the few berries

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Inheritance of Sex. In Mercurialis Annua

Cited by 32 publications

References 26 publications

Sex determination in dioecious Mercurialis annua and its close diploid and polyploid relatives

Sex determination in dioecious Mercurialis annua and its close diploid and polyploid relatives

Hybridization, Polyploidy, and the Evolution of Sexual Systems in Mercurialis (Euphorbiaceae)

The Inheritance of Flower Types and Fertility in the Strawberry

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