ArticleThe New phytologist2019
YY males of the dioecious plant Mercurialis annua are fully viable but produce largely infertile pollen.
Article in The New phytologist, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Weeding out variability: a proof-of-concept for producing uniform FHorticulture research · 2026Article
- Sex-allocation trade-offs and their genetic architecture revealed by experimental evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Recurrent allopolyploidization, Y-chromosome introgression and the evolution of sexual systems in the plant genusPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The contributions of Nettie Stevens to the field of sex chromosome biology.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Simulated herbivory enhances leaky sex expression in the dioecious herb Mercurialis annua.Annals of botany · 2022Article
- Enhanced leaky sex expression in response to pollen limitation in the dioecious plant Mercurialis annua.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The suppression of recombination during sex-chromosome evolution is thought to be favoured by linkage between the sex-determining locus and sexually antagonistic loci, and leads to the degeneration of the chromosome restricted to the heterogametic sex. Despite substantial evidence for genetic degeneration at the sequence level, the phenotypic effects of the earliest stages of sex-chromosome evolution are poorly known. Here, we compare the morphology, viability and fertility between XY and YY individuals produced by crossing seed-producing males in the dioecious plant Mercurialis annua, which has young sex chromosomes with limited X-Y sequence divergence. We found no significant difference in viability or vegetative morphology between XY and YY males. However, electron microscopy revealed clear differences in pollen anatomy, and YY males were significantly poorer sires in competition with their XY counterparts. Our study suggests either that the X chromosome is required for full male fertility in M. annua, or that male fertility is sensitive to the dosage of relevant Y-linked genes. We discuss the possibility that the maintenance of male-fertility genes on the X chromosome might have been favoured in recent population expansions that selected for the ability of females to produce pollen in the absence of males.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.