Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Letters to Nature
Nature 263, 125-126 (9 September 1976) | doi:10.1038/263125a0; Accepted 15 July 1976
Why be an hermaphrodite?
ERIC L. CHARNOV*, JAMES J. BULL* & J. MAYNARD SMITH†
- *Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
- †School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, Sussex BN1 90G, UK
Abstract
MANY animals and most higher plants are hermaphrodites. The basic argument of this paper is that the sex habit of a species is determined by selection acting on the number of offspring produced by individuals of different types. The argument differs radically from most earlier explanations of the evolution of hermaphroditism (reviewed by Ghiselin)1,2, although it is formally similar to a recent explanation3 of sequential hermaphroditism, in which individuals function first as one sex and then the other.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
