ArticleBMC evolutionary biology2017
A reconstruction of sexual modes throughout animal evolution.
Article in BMC evolutionary biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sex Determination in Sponges.Molecular reproduction and development · 2026Review
- Evolution, Development, and the Incoherence of Sex: A Framework for Multiple Sex Concepts.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Hermaphrodite, Gonochorist, and More: Navigating the Complexities of Sex-Related Language in Biology.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Review
- Explaining sex: contrast between social and sexual selection.Biology of sex differences · 2025Review
- The evolution of reproduction in Ediacaran-Cambrian metazoans.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Article
- The Tree of Sex consortium: a global initiative for studying the evolution of reproduction in eukaryotes.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2025Article
- An Extension of Muller's Sheltering Hypothesis for the Evolution of Sex Chromosome Gene Content.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Seasonal environmental change and sex change in a cnidarian.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Evolutionary changes of noncoding elements associated with transition of sexual mode inScience advances · 2024Article
- Article
- Hermaphroditic origins of anisogamy.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- XY sex determination in a cnidarian.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Trioecy is maintained as a time-stable mating system in the pink sea urchin Toxopneustes roseus from the Mexican Pacific.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Sex determination and sex chromosome evolution in land plants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Review
- Gene-rich UV sex chromosomes harbor conserved regulators of sexual development.Science advances · 2021Article
- Extensive gene rearrangements in the mitogenomes of congeneric annelid species and insights on the evolutionary history of the genus Ophryotrocha.BMC genomics · 2020Article
- Review
- Braincase simplification and the origin of lissamphibians.PloS one · 2019Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundAlthough most extant animals have separate sexes, simultaneous hermaphrodites can be found in lineages throughout the animal kingdom. However, the sexual modes of key ancestral nodes including the last common ancestor (LCA) of all animals remain unclear. Without these data, it is difficult to infer the reproductive-state transitions that occurred early in animal evolution, and thus a broad understanding of the evolution of animal reproduction remains elusive. In this study, we use a composite phylogeny from four previously published studies, two alternative topologies (ctenophores or sponges as sister to the rest of animals), and multiple phylogenetic approaches to conduct the most extensive analysis to date of the evolution of animal sexual modes.
resultsOur analyses clarify the sexual mode of many ancestral animal nodes and allow for sound inferences of modal transitions that have occurred in animal history. Our results also indicate that the transition from separate sexes to hermaphroditism has been more common in animal history than the reverse.
conclusionsThese results provide the most complete view of the evolution of animal sexual modes to date and provide a framework for future inquiries into the correlation of these transitions with genes, behaviors, and physiology. These results also suggest that mutations promoting hermaphroditism have historically been more likely to invade gonochoristic populations than vice versa.
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