Journal
BIOESSAYS
Volume 38, Issue 12, Pages 1218-1226Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/bies.201600093
Keywords
bipotential gonad; bistability; developmental noise; ESD; GSD; phenotype switching; polygenic sex determination; stochasticity
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Funding
- Swiss NSF [31003A-129894, CRSII3_147625]
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [CRSII3_147625] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)
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Sex-determining factors are usually assumed to be either genetic or environmental. The present paper aims at drawing attention to the potential contribution of developmental noise, an important but often-neglected component of phenotypic variance. Mutual inhibitions between male and female pathways make sex a bistable equilibrium, such that random fluctuations in the expression of genes at the top of the cascade are sufficient to drive individual development toward one or the other stable state. Evolutionary modeling shows that stochastic sex determinants should resist elimination by genetic or environmental sex determinants under ecologically meaningful settings. On the empirical side, many sex-determination systems traditionally considered as environmental or polygenic actually provide evidence for large components of stochasticity. In reviewing the field, I argue that sex-determination systems should be considered within a three-ends continuum, rather than the classical two-ends continuum.
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