Quote Originally Posted by stinkyattic
Well, yes and no. You have to think bigger to understand why the male:female ratios shown by cannabis, which come out fairly even, make sense in the whole picture.
A plant's (or any organism's) main goal in life is to perpetuate its species, and for a dioecious plant such as cannabis, holly, gingko, or hops, sexual reproduction depends on having at least one individual of each expressed gender in close enough proximity to pollinate (I'm going to leave out hermaphrodite expression for the moment). So even though it might take only one male to pollinate 5 females (the recommended planting group to make holly trees produce ornamental berries), should that single male die, ALL those females are now rendered unable to reproduce. Another way to look at it is that in an area where germination or seedling survival is low, what if only 2 or 3 individuals survive to breeding age? If the gender ratios are about even, the probability is very high that one of each gender will pop up, and the species is continued in that location for one more year. Look at animals- humans, even. And I don't wanna hear no bits about cultist Texans neither, lol! When there are two genders, it is always satatistically more likely that there will be at least one of each in any given location, no matter how small the population size, when the ratio is 1:1. This is accomplished by having a sex determination system with 2 chromosmes, X and Y, with male gender being controlled by the presence or absence of the Y chromosome.
The herm trait is another safeguard against local extinction when the population dips so low that there might not be one of each gender, or in the unlikely scenario that all individuals of x gender die off. If one of the individuals happens to be able to grow opposite sex parts, breeding can take place after all, and the population survives another season. This is not only seen as hermaphrotidism in cannabis; a few fish and reptile species can actually undergo complete REVERSAL in those situations!
The 99%+ female expression in the offspring of a herm plant are just a byproduct of the missinh Y chromosome... that number is not really related to any sort of evolved survival mechanism.
That goes a long way to help me prove my theory: Germans love David Hasselhoff.