Digest: Sexual conflict as a novel hypothesis for the evolution of gynodioecy.

Can sexual conflict over the length of male versus female maturity phases within hermaphroditic flowers promote the evolution of gynodioecy? Wang et al. found that hermaphroditic plants of Cyananthus delavayi exhibited a plastic response to a failure in pollen removal, which compromised seed production by reducing the duration of the female maturity phase to the benefit of the male phase. Sexual conflict over sex-specific temporal maturity may bring about sufficient fertility differences between hermaphrodites and females to promote the evolution of gynodioecy.