Gender part eight: Anthropogenic Chemicals and Human Sexuality

Note: This show first aired on August 18, 2012.

Here on the show, we’ve spent the last several weeks talking about gender. As humans, our tendency is to think of gender as a hard and fixed quality with few exceptions. That is because we are mammals, and mammals have the hardest and most fixed sexual differentiation system on the planet. I hope that I’ve been able to convince you that in most other groups of organisms, gender is a variable and plastic endeavor; that is the norm, we are the outliers (our transgendered brethren not withstanding).

We humans may be in for a nasty surprise in the coming decades. It turns out that our genders are getting a tiny bit more plastic as a result of well, plastic, and a multitude of other substances that we have created in the lab in the past 50 years or so. It turns out that many of these chemicals (you know all the names: phthalates, bisphenol A, PCB’s, atrazine, flame retardants, DDT etc) are what we call endocrine disruptors. They have estrogen like molecular structures, and thus bind with estrogen receptors on our cells and turn on estrogen sensitive genes. The few that aren’t direct estrogen mimics still have a net estrogen like effect on the body. We talked about hormones and their effect on the sexual development of the human body in our discussion of why men have nipples; it will be useful to revisit it here.

So, the human form has a default mode, and that is essentially female. In the absence of other directions, our genetics describe a female body whose development is governed primarily by estrogen. Males develop because genes on the Y chromosome tell certain cells to make androgens like testosterone. You can have a Y chromosome, but if there is damage on it, and it doesn’t do its job, you won’t develop as fully male, or have a host of other reproductive problems. In humans, as in most organisms, expressed gender is a result of the balance between estrogens and androgens, regardless of the genetic make up of the individual. Which brings us to our endocrine disruptors.

Lets start with a chemical so common scientists refer to it as “ubiquitous” in terms of human exposure, phthalates. There are two main catagories (and many many individual chemicals), high density and low density phthalates. High density phthalates  are used as plasticizers in plastics and polyvinylchloride (PVC). They make plastics softer. Chemicals in this class were banned for use in children’s toys nationwide in 2008. Low density phthalates are used in cosmetics and other smelly things, they make fragrances last longer (this is why the first hint that a woman is pregnant is that she starts purchasing fragrance free personal care products!—more on why in a moment). They are quite volatile and readily leach out of what they are in, so, phthalates are everywhere.

Phthalates function as an antiandrogen endocrine disruptor, by at least in part, inhibiting the synthesis of testosterone. No testosterone? No male development. What we actually see is a group of alterations to male sexual organs that has a name; “phthalate syndrome”; it includes reduced penis size and impaired testicular descent among other things. Studies have also concluded that phthalates interfere with male brain development, and result in “reduced masculine play in boys”. Many other anthropogenic endocrine disruptors work in similar ways, disrupting the testosterone pathways in the developing male. Its important to note that for many of these effects, the window for problems to occur is very early in embryonic development when those bipotential gonads are first differentiating, and requires very low exposure levels. Hence those pregnant ladies and their fragrance free lotions.

Endocrine disruptors affect females as well, to be sure, but they generally do not masculate them, in a mirror image of the male effect. Early onset of puberty and multiple reproductive abnormalities are among the more common effects noted for females.

So its not just feminized frogs and hermaphroditic polar bears anymore. The bird of our toxic legacy has come home to roost. Because many of the chemicals are relatively new (as in the past 30 to 40 years), and their impact is often in utero,  but we don’t become reproductively active for a couple of decades after that on average, the negative effects on our reproduction can be delayed and difficult to connect back to our inutero exposure to an endocrine disruptor. So what does this mean for gender in humans? We might not be able to fill our biological roles quite as well as we once did, which, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, may have significant long term impacts on the future of the human species on this planet.

References:

Swan, S. H. et al, “Prenatal phthalate exposure and reduced masculine play in boys” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874619/?tool=pubmed

Swan, Shana S. “Environmental phthalate exposure in relation to reproductive outcomes and other health endpoints in humans” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775531/?tool=pubmed

McLachlan, John et al “Endocrine disruptors and female reproductive health” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16522520

Info about the national phthalate ban http://www.cpsc.gov/info/toysafety/phthalates.html

Nicolopoulou-Stamati, P. and M. A. Pitsos “The impact of endocrine disrupters on the female reproductive system” http://humupd.oxfordjournals.org/content/7/3/323.short

Post Script: So, how do I avoid phthalates anyway? First, the good news is that phthalates have a very short residence time in the body, as short as a day or two. So if you are successful in lowering your exposure, your body burden will decrease rapidly.  Due to the ubiquitous nature of phthalate use in consumer products, it is difficult, (but not impossible) to lower your phthalate exposure. Below are a few links with some good ways to start you on your way.

http://www.rodale.com/phthalates 

http://www.oeconline.org/our-work/healthier-lives/pollutioninpeople/solutions/phthalates

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2008/05/07/how-to-limit-your-exposure-to-phthalates

Gender part seven: What they got wrong in Finding Nemo

Note: This program first aired on August 11, 2012.

Once upon a time there was an entertainment company, and they set out to make a film for children that was accurate about life in the ocean, but entertaining at the same time. They chose a clown fish for their main character, and featured several other real fish and animal species as supporting characters. They went scuba diving on real reefs, to see how real fish move, in an attempt to get their animation as accurate as possible. The film went on to be one of the top grossing kids movies of all time, and win four Academy Awards. You can guess by now I am talking about Disney’s Finding Nemo.

They got a lot right in finding Nemo, but there’s one thing they got wrong, really wrong. Here’s the thing about clownfish. Most of us know that they live in a symbiotic relationship with a host anemone, a creature that would sting and possibly kill most reef animals. What most of us don’t know is that clown fish live in  strict social groups, of usually 5-6 animals. At the top of the hierarchy is the breeding female. She is the largest of the group, and calls the shots.  The next in command is the breeding male. After that, the three to four smaller, non breeding, male fish.  This is how it works, the female is in charge, but if anything happens to her, everyone below her gets a promotion and bumps up in the hierarchy. The male becomes the female, and the biggest of the asexual fish becomes the male. So, when Nemo’s mom got eaten by that barracuda at the beginning of the movie, Nemo’s dad should have switched it up and become Nemo’s new mom, because clownfish are sequential hermaphrodites.

In clownfish, it appears that stress hormones control this process. Clownfish are born male, but switch to female when they fully mature. In a social group the breeding female keeps all the other fish in her group stressed by harassing them and limiting their access to recourses. This keeps them from developing fully and with their resources going towards stress hormones instead of growth, they remain male. If something happens to the female, the stress pressure is temporarily released, and everyone in the group has a bit of respite. They actually grow, and the largest male, the one that was the breeder actually gets to mature into a female, at which point, he starts harassing all the other fish again, and the cycle starts over. This is the sex change suppression model, the normal course of development is impeded by strict social control. Its important to note here that the normal course of development is a switch from male to female, the system in question just controls when that happens. The other main model of sequential hermaphrodism in fishes at least, is the sex induction model. This requires an awareness on the part of the individual fish of sex ratios or size ratios in a large group. When the ratio becomes too skewed, a sex change is initiated to rectify the situation. For you salt water aquarists, Sea Goldies and various species of wrasse are subject to this kind of sex change. 

Sequential hermaphrodism is common in many gastropods as well as a few flat worms, the random crustacean and even an echinoderm. None of these species are as cute, and screen friendly as Nemo though. Though I understand why Disney ducked this issue when it made the film, I think the world would be a more interesting and open minded place if parents had to explain sequential hermaphrodism to their children, and kids grew up understanding that when it comes to gender (and most everything else for that matter) the world doesn’t necessarily work the same way we humans do.

References:

Interested in the challenges of animating a fish? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0530_030530_findingnemo.html

Personal communication, Dr. Ann Cleveland, Maine Maritime Academy, Castine Maine (once again, having a clownfish researcher for a boss has its perks!)

Interesting perspective on just how unique the clownfish transformation is: http://rhodeslab.beckman.illinois.edu/fish/Fish%20Lab.htm

 Abstract only online: Environmental Biology of Fishes

Volume 29, Number 2 (1990), 81-93, DOI: 10.1007/BF00005025

http://www.springerlink.com/content/m806xlu045751u21/ outlines the models of different mechanisms for sex change in fishes

Gender part six: Simultaneous Hermaphrodism in Animals

Note: This program first aired August 4, 2012.

The animal kingdom is full of mind boggling diversity, when it comes to making baby animals. Years ago an astute listener sent me a book, called How Animals Have Sex: A Guide to the Reproductive Habits of Creatures Great and Small, which documents in an extremely humorous way, this amazing diversity. The book highlights the reproductive strategies of many creatures from the animal world, including a few of today’s topic, the simultaneous hermaphrodites.

The word hermaphrodite comes from Greek mythology. Hermaphroditos was the son of Aphrodite and Hermes. One day he met a beautiful water nymph Salmacis, who kissed him and prayed that they be united forever. The Greek gods were extremely literal in this case, and Hermaphroditos was forever after recognized as part male and part female.

Animals that practice simultaneous hermaphrodism are like Hermaphroditos, by having gonads with both functional ovarian and testicular tissue, meaning they can make both eggs and sperm at the same time (scrabble players take note, the organs are called ovotestes, singular ovotestis). Animals that can do this include many gastropods, like our common garden slugs and snails, many other groups of molluscs, flat worms, many segmented worms like earth worms and leaches, some bivalves, the ectoprotcs like bryozoans, and even a few fish. There are estimates that as many as one third of all animals, excluding insects, are hermaphrodites.

Some of these species are self fertile, and can use their own sperm to fertilize their own eggs, others have evolved barriers against self fertilization, like many hermaphroditic plants. When hermaphroditic animals mate, a typical scenario is to swap sperm. Some species practice a variation on that theme, with one individual acting as male and the other as female during mating. Then they switch roles and mate again. Sometimes there is a difference between the gonadal gender and the functional or behavioral gender of an individual. They may have fully functional male and female gonads but choose to present as either one or the other for social reasons, often having to do with relative size or population density.

Phylogeny is evolutionary history. The phylogeny of hermaphrodism is unresolved at best. It appears that hermaphrodism is what we call a derived condition, as opposed to an ancestral condition. This means that hermaphrodism is not the original, or ancestral state of animal sexuality, it has been derived at some later time in animal evolution. Because it is seen in many relatively unrelated groups this also means it has evolved independently several times. This is called convergent evolution, and when we see that happen, we know the populations involved are on to something good, something that works. 

The thing that works is that hermaphrodism allows organisms to maximize their chances of getting their DNA into viable offspring. It can literally double their chances. Beyond the opportunity to fertilize yourself in a pinch (which we know from previous discussions isn’t actually advisable), having double duty gonads functionally doubles the population size of a group by having each individual act as both a male and a female. So not only do I have a chance at having offspring if I take your sperm and fertilize my eggs with it, I can double my chances by giving you some of my sperm to fertilize your eggs with. If I live in an area with low population density, this is especially helpful, because it means I can mate with anyone I encounter, instead of being one gender and wandering about looking for an individual of the opposite one. For these groups of organisms, these benefits outweigh the metabolic costs of having to make two different kinds of gametes and the elaborate sexual organs needed to manipulate these gametes.

This may not be at all what the Greek gods had in mind when they transformed Hermaphroditos, but it has made life easier for many of our invertebrate friends, and our experience of the natural world just that much richer.

References:

This is the book I wish that I had written: Strorm, David, How Animals Have Sex Gotham Books, NY, NY 2005 ISBN: 1592401910 I include the ISBN because you know you want to buy this book.

 Leonard, Janet ed. The Evolution of Primary Sexual Character in Animals Oxford University Press (partial preview available on Google Books)

Editorial in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology “Mode and tempo in environmental sex determination in vertebrates” 2009

Avise, J. C., Mank J.E. “Evolutionary Perspectives on Hermaphrodism in Fishes” Sexual Development 2009, 3: 152-163

Gender part five: Sex determination in some animals

Note: This program first aired on July 21, 2012.

In many species of animal, what makes a male a male and a female a female is tightly controlled by genetic regulation. This makes sense, as species that reproduce sexually rely on having both sexes represented in the population. In other animals though, sex determination is controlled by environmental factors, usually temperature. And if you have been listening to this show long enough, you should be able to guess by now that there is a third system, that is a blend of these two mechanisms.

To begin, regardless of the system used, all of us vertebrates start out with indifferent or bipotential gonads. These could develop into either ovaries or testes. The first mechanism for this differentiation to occur is called Genotypic Sex Determination (or GSD), in other words, the genes you inherit from your parents determine your functional sex. We talked about this quite a bit when we looked at the phenomenon of male nipples. We are familiar with this system because, barring complications that is how it works for most of us mammals. In fact, the group that includes us, the Eutherian Mammals is the most strictly GSD group of animal out there!

The second system is called Temperature Dependent Sex Determination (or TSD), and is favored by many fish and reptiles. In this system, the development of the gonads from the bipotential state is regulated by environmental temperature, during a specific window of early development, called the thermosensitive period. Species utilizing this method have specific temperature thresholds, above, below, or inbetween which the sex determination switches. The third process is the blend. It turns out that some fish and reptiles have a genetically determined sex, but those sex chromosomes can be overridden by environmental temperature, a phenomena and area of research called epigenetics, or the factors that act on genes, turning them on and off. Its these two mechanisms that I want to talk about today, and we can talk about them together because it turns out that the details are the same in both, whether the fish or reptile has sex chromosomes or not.

The primary influence on the sex determination of any non mammalian vertebrate is the ratio of androgens (male hormones like testosterone) to estrogens. The key factor in temperature dependent sex determination seems to be an enzyme called aromatase. It job is to turn androgens into estrogens, thus affecting the critical androgen/estrogen balance. When aromatase is upregulated, androgens are readily converted to estrogen and the result is female. When the aromatase is down regulated, estrogen is not formed and the result is male. In fish that exhibit some form of TSD, the pattern is well established. Temperatures warmer than a critical threshold (that varies by species), down regulate the genes that produce the aromatase enzyme. Warmer water strongly biases the sex ratio in susceptible fish populations towards males. This has been inadvertently demonstrated in some aquaculture operations; the larval fish are kept in artificially warm environments to increase their growth rate, and have turned out to be almost entirely male as well!

Reptiles show much more diversity with TSD. Warm temperature affect lizards and crocodiles differently than it does turtles. In lizards and crocodiles, warm temperatures yield males, like fish. In turtles the opposite seems to be true, warm temperature biases towards females.  This points to multiple pathways for the upregulation and down regulation of aromatase producing and regulating genes.

As a final note from developmental biology, there is strong evidence that even with the plasticity of sex in these organisms, once the developmental window is closed, gender is permanently established. Changing the temperature for the duration of embryonic development will not change the gender of the organism again.

References: Three really good and readable articles with lots of good background information:

Navarro-Martín L, Viñas J, Ribas L, Díaz N, Gutiérrez A, et al. (2011) DNA Methylation of the Gonadal Aromatase (cyp19a) Promoter Is Involved in Temperature-Dependent Sex Ratio Shifts in the European Sea Bass. PLoS Genet 7(12): e1002447. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002447

Pieau C. and Dorizzi M. Oestrogens and temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles: all is in the gonads Journal of Endocrinology June 1 2004 181 http://joe.endocrinology-journals.org/content/181/3/367

Barske, Lindsey and Capel, Blanche Blurring the Edges in Vertebrate Sex Determination Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2008 Dec; 18 (6) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2660668/

Gender Part Four: Plants Gone Wild

Note: This show originally aired on July 14, 2012.

We have been spending the past few weeks looking at the biological basis for and variation in gender. This week we continue our look at sexuality in plants.

The vast majority of flowering plants or angiosperms are hermaphroditic, having both male and female reproductive structures on the same plant and usually in the same flower, we discussed those in detail a couple of weeks ago. A small minority of plant species have bucked the trend and evolved to have fully separate sexes, with males and females occurring in entirely different individuals. These polymorphic plants are called dioceious. Gender in dioecious plants is determined genetically and there is, to use the word of one researcher, a “bewildering” level of variability in the sexual structures of dioecious angiosperms.

Plant sexual polymorphism (poly meaning many, morph meaning shape) is a relatively new invention in angiosperms, and this newness is the reason for the variability. Amazingly this form of sex determination is estimated to have evolved over 100 separate times. This means that many many lines of angiosperm plants have, in evolutionary terms, solved the same problem in the same or similar ways. These plants have evolved an XX/XY sex chromosome system, much like ours, but it is relatively new in evolutionary terms, so it is much more complicated and less well resolved than the relatively simple mammalian system. Dioecy (or the state of being dioecious) is not at all the straight forward boy meets girl scenario we humans are used to; in addition to the male meets female system, there are male meets female biased hermaphrodite and female meets male biased hermaphrodite, and mixes of all three as well.  These plants are experimenting wildly with sexual reproduction, beyond the dreams of even the most creative humans. This chaos (and it is chaos, if you don’t believe me, dive into the literature) is a result of the relative youth of the dioecious reproductive system. We’ve already said that angiosperms have the most diverse reproductive structures of any group of organisms. Think of these dioecious outliers as those on the forefront of a new evolutionary wave. Sometimes they succeed, other times they fail. While there is some evidence that this system yields a lower overall reproductive rate, I think it is too soon to judge the results of this evolutionary experiment.

As if all this sexual experimentation weren’t enough, it gets really interesting with the fact that many unisexual plants are diphasic, meaning they change sex, starting as one, ending as another. One reason for this life strategy is environmental stress. A close to home example is the unusual wood and wetland species Jack in the Pulpit, aka Arisaema triphyllum. This is a multi year perennial plant, and when it first emerges, it is non flowering. Then it develops into a male plant. Traditional thinking has it that pollen is a less energy intensive gamete to produce than the larger ovule, hence smaller plants with less resources to devote to gamete production will be male. If the environment is stressful enough, in terms of nutrient levels or space competition, the plant remains male. If it is able to gather enough resources to grow larger, it will switch sexes and present as female in later years. There is evidence that the sex ratio of the plants around it also effects its sex determination. These plants are able to do this because the have a “plastic genotype” that allows them to develop one of a few options depending on the environmental conditions they are presented with in any give growing season. This plasticity, I believe, is a result of the relative youth of this sexual system. This is the wild west of biology, the rules aren’t fully written yet, and these plants are testing the limits of the system, which, as noted above, can lead as easily to failure as to reward.

The other thing we should note, is that if these individuals can change sex, that means that they must have the genetic code for both sexes in their genome, even if they are using a proto version of an X/Y sexual determination system similar to ours. Many vertebrates have no sexual determination genetics, and rely totally on environmental factors for determining gender. As mammals evolved on a branch of the tree of life away from other vertebrates, is it possible that our gender development was as plastic as these plants we now observe? We will consider that in the coming weeks as we continue our exploration of the origins of gender. 

References:

From the Indian Academy of Sciences, a pair of articles in their science education journal Resonance. From 1998, Volume 3 No. 4 R.M. Borge’s Gender in Plants: Why do plants change sex? and Vol. 3 No. 11 R. M. Borges Gender in Plants: More about Why and How Plants Change Sex. Dated, but useful.

http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/Volume3.htm

Barret, Spencer “The Evolution of Plant Sexual Diversity” Nature Reviews: Genetics April 2002, Vol. 3

Charlesworth, D. “Plant Sex Determination and Sex Chromosomes” Heredity 2002 (88) 94-101 Very technical, good luck with this one.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080807144242.htm “Gene for sexual switching in melons provides clues to evolution of sex”

http://www.pitt.edu/~kalisz/Research.html Website for the University of Pittsburgh Kalisz Lab, a plant research lab.

Gender 3: Male Nipples and Human Evolution

Note: This program first aired July 7, 2012.

I was asked recently, why men have nipples. As we are currently working our way through the biological issues of gender, I thought this might be a good side track because it takes us from the somewhat silly idea of men’s nipples, to the much deeper and fundamental concepts of evolution and human development.

My initial guess was that men have nipples because nipples are an evolutionary orphan—left over from a time when perhaps both sexes of mammals nursed young.   Another idea was that maybe nipples had some other function in early mammals; regardless, I thought men had them because they once needed them and now don’t, and, like our appendix, they haven’t fully evolved away.

It turns out that, to the best of our knowledge, a small part of my guess was right (which means that large part of it was wrong as well). The part I was right about was the easy part. If an individual has a trait that has a negative impact on its ability to reproduce, that individual’s genes (and the traits they encode for) will disappear from the population. This is the mechanism of natural selection. However, if an individual displays a trait that is neutral to its ability to reproduce, there is no selective pressure that will make that trait disappear.  The bottom line is that once a trait appears in a population, if it isn’t doing any harm, it isn’t likely to disappear. This is the argument for why men still have nipples. While it is possible for men to get breast cancer (not only do they have nipples but mammary tissue as well), it is rare and not affecting the overall reproductive rate of the human population. So, while they are arguably useless, they are likely here to stay.

But this doesn’t really address the primary question, why do they have them in the first place? My thought, that they have them because they once needed them, seems to be all wrong. Almost all male mammals have nipples, and there is no evidence in the geologic record or in current species, that males ever used them for nursing. Mammary tissue originated pre mammal—in a group called synapsids ( first seen about 310 mya—small lizard like animals). They didn’t have nipples per say, but simply nourished their eggs and eventually young with secretions that came out of their skin, through structures related to hair follicles (platypus and other monotremes still lactate this way, picture milk oozing out of the skin of your chest and your infant licking it off you). There is some debate about origin of this tissue, did it arise from sweat glands? sebaceous glands?  or some other related cutaneous gland? Did the secretions nourish live young or as some hypothesize, get absorbed directly through the thin shells of the eggs of these early animals? It is not clear, as this tissue does not fossilize well. But it is clear that lactation predates nipples.

So it seems that the real reason male mammals have nipples is due to the realities of our very early development as embryos. It is commonly said that all human embryos start out “female”; this is an oversimplification that has the ring of urban legend to me, but there is a bit of truth to it. Typically, and in most mammals, individual who carry the XX genotype for their sex chromosomes develop into females, individuals who carry the XY genotype develop into males. All the traits and structures that we think of as human are on the 22 other pairs of chromosomes, including the coding for nipples and mammary tissue. The only difference between males and females is the presence of that Y sex chromosome, and amazingingly, the only thing it does is tell certain cells to make testosterone several weeks into the development of an embryo. That testosterone then tells the sex organ cells to become testes and male genetalia instead of ovaries and female genetalia. Without that testosterone cue, an embryo with an XY genotype will develop in the default mode, as a human who’s development is governed more by estrogen than testosterone, someone we would identify as female. 

Another thing that testosterone pulse does is suppress the development of the mammary tissue (though in humans, not completely). In a few species of mammal, (rats, horses) the testosterone completely suppresses the development of this tissue, and as a result, males of those species have no nipples at all. Again though, nipples on human males don’t seem to cause many problems, so we haven’t evolved such radical measures. In fact, males who experience non typical hormonal patterns or who experience the lower levels of testosterone common in older age can develop more mammary tissue, breasts and even in very rare cases, can lactate.

To recap: Mammals evolved nipples because nipples worked better than sweating milk for feeding young. Men have them because they are in the generic blue print for human being, and there has been no selective pressure to fully get rid of them. And the more we know about the delicate nature of the early development of the human embryo, the more clear it becomes that both native hormones and pollutants that mimic estrogen and testosterone in the body can have a profound effect not only on our health, but on our very identity.

References: 

Andrew Simons, 2003 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-men-have-nipples

Interesting thoughts from Cecil Adams, the “worlds’ smartest humanbeing” http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/85/why-do-men-have-nipples In fact, there are many people blogging about this issue. If you Google “Why do men have nipples?”, you will primarily get blogs as top hits.

“The Mammary Gland and Its Origin During Synapsid Evolution” Olav T. Oftedal,  Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia Vol. 7, No. 3 July 2002

Gender: Part 2

Note: This program first aired in June 2012.

Today we continue our ongoing discussion of gender and how it relates to biological reproduction and the amazing diversity we see in nature. To review, we know that individuals we call females make ova or eggs, and individuals we call males make sperm, and in humans, this comes with a whole lot of extra baggage (to be fair, many animals exhibit the differences in appearance and behavior called sexual dimorphism, but I believe we are the only species to have come up with misogyny and homophobia among other things).

When it comes to reproductive equipment, flowering plants, technically called angiosperms, have all other groups of organisms beat. As a group, angiosperms have the highest variety of reproductive structures on Earth. In this group, the most common sexual form is the hermaphrodite, meaning both female and male components are found in the same flower. These flowers can also be referred to as bisexual, and are botanically classified as “perfect”. It is thought that all angiosperms evolved from a hermaphroditic ancestor, and single sex, non hermaphroditic strategies evolved later. This is why 75 to 85% of angiosperms are hermaphrodites.

What are the benefits of being a hermaphroditic plant? The one that jumps to mind initially is that if there are no other potential mates around, you can fertilize your self. In theory this works, but most plants actually go to great lengths to avoid this phenomenon (called “selfing”).  Like interbreeding in royal families, selfing tends to bring out genetic weaknesses over several generations. Think of selfing as a last chance scenario, especially for annual plants, who live only one growing season and “winter over” in seed form. If the plant doesn’t get to mate with anyone else, at least it can sustain itself over the winter as a seed generated from a self fertilization; ideally in not too many generations in a row.  

Another way that hermaphrodism increases an individual’s chances of mating is in a low density potential mate situation; a less extreme version of what we just talked about. If there are very few potential mates around, what happens if they are all male? Or all female? They aren’t the isolated individuals of the former scenario but they still can’t mate successfully in a single sex group. Hermaphrodism in plants ensures both sexes are represented, even in a low density population.

Yet another benefit of hermaphrodism in plants is that it extends their mating season. Hermaphrodites can functionally bias their flowers towards one sex or the other for various reasons. While the flower will have both male and female sexual structures (the androecium and gynecium respectively), they may not be functional at the same time. For example the male may mature first, and produce pollen. Later the female parts will mature, ready to accept pollen from a separate individual. The plant has then essentially doubled the amount of time it is spreading and mixing its DNA, and has eliminated the chance of selfing as well.

The bet hedging, flowering species of the plant kingdom have clearly benefited from utilizing both genders simultaneously for millions of years, yielding extraordinary biodiversity and resilience. And with all of our ideas about gender and value, sexuality and stereotypes, most of us just see the flower.

References:

From the Indian Academy of Sciences, a pair of articles in their science education journal Resonance. From 1998, Volume 3 No. 4 R.M. Borge’s Gender in Plants: Why do plants change sex? and Vol. 3 No. 11 R. M. Borges Gender in Plants: More about Why and How Plants Change Sex. Dated, but useful.

http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/Volume3.htm

University of Oxford’s Science Blog features a conversation from March 2009, with Dr. John Pannell of the Oxford Dept. of Plant Sciences

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/science_blog/090312.html

Dr. Spencer Barrett’s “The evolution of plant sexual diversity” is lengthy and quite technical, but dedicated readers may find much to ponder. April 2002, Vol. 3  www.nature.com/reviews/genetics