Sexual system

[3] Sexual systems play a key role in genetic variation and reproductive success, and may also have led to the origin or extinction of certain species.

[4] In flowering plants and animals, sexual reproduction involves meiosis, an adaptive process for repairing damage in the germline DNA transmitted to progeny.

[2] Interest in sexual systems goes back to Charles Darwin, who found that barnacles include some species that are androdioecious and some that are dioecious.

In dimorphic sexual systems, individual plants within a species only produce one sort of flower, either hermaphrodite or male, or female.

[8] In animals, androdioecy, gynodioecy, and trioecy are referred to as mixed sexual systems;[9]where hermaphrodites coexist with single sexed individuals.