Abstract
Female plants of Thymus vulgaris produce more seeds than hermaphrodites but their frequency in a population is not determined by the magnitude of this advantage. Instead, the proximity of the population to equilibrium determines the frequency of females: the further from equilibrium, the higher the frequency of females. This trend is due to founde effects occurring among cytoplasmic and nuclear genes determining male sterility. A review of literature supports the conclusions that male sterility in higher plants has a nuclear-cytoplasmic inheritance, that the frequency of female plants is often not at equilibrium, and that populations far from equilibrium (young and/or disturbed) have higher frequencies of females.
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Couvet, D., Bonnemaison, F. & Gouyon, PH. The maintenance of females among hermaphrodites: the importance of nuclear-cytoplasmic interactions. Heredity 57, 325–330 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1986.130
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1986.130
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