Vocabulary Question

[swestrup]

Is there a shorter term for the biological evolution of sexual dimorphism than that phrase? I was just thinking about a proposed alien species which is technically unisexual but mates in pairs. Evolutionary pressure is slowly driving the species into having two sexes with distnct specializations. What would one call this process?

Comments

[messiahdivine.livejournal.com]

You mean like in Left Hand of Darkness? (though they weren't evolving) or do you mean like worms?

[swestrup]

Well, more like how, somewhere in our evolutionary past, we went from a unisexual species with sexual reproduction to a species with two distinct sexes. It may have well happened back at the worm stage of things, or even earlier. I must admit to being a little unclear on the evolutionary history of sex.

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

I'd think unimorphism would be the word, since dimorphism is changing into two. Unimorphism would be changing into one.

[swestrup]

But they currently have one sex, and its slowly becoming two. Doesn't that make it some sort of dimorphism? Then again, I thought dimorphism was the word used for the end-product. Wouldn't the process be dimorphology or something?

Color me confused.

[sps.livejournal.com]

'Dimorphing' would be neologistic but nice.

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I misunderstood. Dimorphism would be it, and dimorphology being the science of it.

[grimmwire.livejournal.com]

The process is called "sexual differentiation".

Except that this is generally the term for the process of sexual differentiation of individuals within a species which is already dimorphic, rather than a term for the process of a monomorphic species evolving into a dimorphic one.

I would suggest this process should be called "sexual dimorphogenesis."

Hmm. here's an interesting bunch of theories on the origin of sexual reproduction; but it doesn't get much into the origin of sexual morphic differentiation.

[swestrup]

Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

[messiahdivine.livejournal.com]

I agree - I just spoke to my friend the paleontologist and he said evolution of sexual dimorphism would work - so "sexual dimorphogenesis" would indeed fit the bill?