Life‐history trade‐offs promote the evolution of dioecy

Most dioecious plants are perennial and subject to trade‐offs between sexual reproduction and vegetative performance. However, these broader life‐history trade‐offs have not usually been incorporated into theoretical analyses of the evolution of separate sexes. One such analysis has indicated that h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of evolutionary biology 2018-09, Vol.31 (9), p.1405-1412
Main Authors: Dorken, Marcel E., Van Drunen, Wendy E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
androdioecy
cost of reproduction
dioecy
Evolution
Evolutionarily stable strategy
gynodioecy
Hermaphroditism
invasibility analysis
Phenotypes
Reproduction
Reproduction (biology)
Resource allocation
Sex
sex allocation
Sexual reproduction
subdioecy
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Summary:Most dioecious plants are perennial and subject to trade‐offs between sexual reproduction and vegetative performance. However, these broader life‐history trade‐offs have not usually been incorporated into theoretical analyses of the evolution of separate sexes. One such analysis has indicated that hermaphroditism is favoured over unisexuality when female and male sex functions involve the allocation of nonoverlapping types of resources to each sex function (e.g. allocations of carbon to female function vs. allocations of nitrogen to male function). However, some dioecious plants appear to conform to this pattern of resource allocation, with different resource types allocated to female vs. male sex functions. Using an evolutionarily stable strategy approach, we show that life‐history trade‐offs between sexual reproduction and vegetative performance enable the evolution of unisexual phenotypes even when there are no direct resource‐based trade‐offs between female and male sex functions. This result might help explain the preponderance of perennial life histories among dioecious plants and why many dioecious plants with annual life histories have indeterminate growth with ongoing trade‐offs between sexual reproduction and vegetative growth.
ISSN:1010-061X
1420-9101
DOI:10.1111/jeb.13335