Sex-determination system
biological system that determines the development of organism’s sex
A sex-determination system is a biological system that determines the development of the organism's sex. Most organisms that create their offspring using sexual reproduction have two common sexes, males and females, and in other species there are hermaphrodites, organisms that can function reproductively as either female or male, or both.
There are also some species in which only one sex is present, temporarily or permanently. This can be due to parthenogenesis, the act of a female reproducing without fertilization, mostly seen in plant species. In some plants or algae the gametophyte stage may reproduce itself, thus producing more individuals of the same sex as the parent.
In some species, sex determination is genetic: males and females have different alleles or even different genes that specify their sexual morphology. In animals this is often accompanied by chromosomal differences, generally through combinations of XY, ZW, XO, ZO chromosomes, or haplodiploidy. The sexual differentiation is generally triggered by a main gene (a "sex locus"), with a multitude of other genes following in a domino effect.
In other cases, the sex of a fetus is determined by environmental variables (such as temperature). The details of some sex-determination systems are not yet fully understood.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sex-determination system” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.