ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
Gamete signalling underlies the evolution of mating types and their number.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evolutionary responses to increased opportunity for sexual selection in yeast.BMC ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Evolution, Development, and the Incoherence of Sex: A Framework for Multiple Sex Concepts.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Evolutionary responses to increased opportunity for sexual selection in yeast.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Hermaphroditic origins of anisogamy.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Sex in protists: A new perspective on the reproduction mechanisms of trypanosomatids.Genetics and molecular biology · 2022Article
- Evolutionary Genomics of Sex-Related Chromosomes at the Base of the Green Lineage.Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Asymmetric mating behavior of isogamous budding yeast.Science advances · 2021Article
- Evolutionary Plasticity of Mating-Type Determination Mechanisms in Paramecium aurelia Sibling Species.Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Fitness differences suppress the number of mating types in evolving isogamous species.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Invasion and Extinction Dynamics of Mating Types Under Facultative Sexual Reproduction.Genetics · 2019Article
- Evolution of asymmetric gamete signaling and suppressed recombination at the mating type locus.eLife · 2019Article
- Estimating the number of sexual events per generation in a facultatively sexual haploid population.Heredity · 2019Article
- Plasmodial slime molds and the evolution of microbial husbandry.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2019Article
- Sexual conflict explains the extraordinary diversity of mechanisms regulating mitochondrial inheritance.BMC biology · 2017Article
- What do isogamous organisms teach us about sex and the two sexes?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
- Weird sex: the underappreciated diversity of sexual reproduction.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Article
- The evolution of mating type switching.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The gametes of unicellular eukaryotes are morphologically identical, but are nonetheless divided into distinct mating types. The number of mating types varies enormously and can reach several thousand, yet most species have only two. Why do morphologically identical gametes need to be differentiated into self-incompatible mating types, and why is two the most common number of mating types? In this work, we explore a neglected hypothesis that there is a need for asymmetric signalling interactions between mating partners. Our review shows that isogamous gametes always interact asymmetrically throughout sex and argue that this asymmetry is favoured because it enhances the efficiency of the mating process. We further develop a simple mathematical model that allows us to study the evolution of the number of mating types based on the strength of signalling interactions between gametes. Novel mating types have an advantage as they are compatible with all others and rarely meet their own type. But if existing mating types coevolve to have strong mutual interactions, this restricts the spread of novel types. Similarly, coevolution is likely to drive out less attractive mating types. These countervailing forces specify the number of mating types that are evolutionarily stable.This article is part of the themed issue 'Weird sex: the underappreciated diversity of sexual reproduction'.
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