Review: Plant sex determination

Most angiosperms are hermaphrodites and produce flowers that have both male (stamens / sperm) and female (carpels / egg) parts. Pannell reviews the developmental and genetic programs that lead to these “perfect” flowers, as well as those that underlie reproductive structure development in dioecious and monoecious species. His analysis further extends to bryophytes and vascular non-seed plants. He describes sex determination in plants as fundamentally a quantitative and plastic trait, with a key conclusion that “separate sexes tend to have evolved independently in different lineages, and much more recently than in most animal lineages.” Curr. Biol. 10.1016/j.cub.2017.01.05