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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Field Experiments of Pollination Ecology: The Case of Lycoris sanguinea var. sanguinea
Published on: November 25, 2016
Experimental evidence for frequency dependent self-fertilization in the gynodioecious plant, Silene vulgaris
Keiko Miyake1, Matthew S Olson
1Institute of Arctic Biology and Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775, USA.
Abstract:
After over a half century of empirical and theoretical research regarding the evolution and maintenance of gynodioecy in plants, unexplored factors influencing the relative fitnesses of females and hermaphrodites remain. Theoretical studies suggest that hermaphrodite self-fertilization (selfing) rate influences the maintenance of gynodioecy and we hypothesized that population sex ratio may influence hermaphrodite selfing rate. An experimental test for frequency-dependent self-fertilization was conducted using replicated populations constructed with different sex ratios of the gynodioecious plant Silene vulgaris. We found that hermaphrodite selfing increased with decreased hermaphrodite frequency, whereas evidence for increased inbreeding depression was equivocal. We argue that incorporation of context dependent inbreeding into future models of the evolution of gynodioecy is likely to yield novel insights into sex ratio evolution.
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