The word hermaphrodite entered the English lexicon as early as the late fourteenth century. According to Ovid, he fused with the nymph Salmacis resulting in one individual possessing physical traits of male and female sexes according to the earlier Diodorus Siculus, he was born with a physical body combining male and female sexes. The term derives from the Latin: hermaphroditus, from Ancient Greek: ἑρμαφρόδιτος, romanized: hermaphroditos, which derives from Hermaphroditus (Ἑρμαφρόδιτος), the son of Hermes and Aphrodite in Greek mythology. The distribution of self-fertilization rates among animals is similar to that of plants, suggesting that similar pressures are operating to direct the evolution of selfing in animals and plants. Most hermaphroditic species exhibit some degree of self-fertilization. (Although the current estimated total number of animal species is about 7.7 million, the study, which estimated the number, 65,000, used an estimated total number of animal species, 1,211,577 from "Classification phylogénétique du vivant (Vol. The percentage of animal species that are hermaphroditic is about 5% in all animal species, or 33% excluding insects. Ī rough estimate of the number of hermaphroditic animal species is 65,000. Hermaphroditism is said to occur in one or two insect species. Rivers there is controversy around hermaphroditism in insects with some experts believing it does not occur. There are no hermaphroditic species among mammals or birds. Intersex activists have preferred the word intersex, since the word hermaphrodite is considered to be stigmatizing, as well as "scientifically specious and clinically problematic." In recent years the term hermaphrodite applied to humans has fallen out of favor since there have been no identified cases of a human reproducing as both male and female, with some biologists saying hermaphroditism does not occur in humans. The term hermaphrodite is commonly used for abnormal cases of dioecious animal species but according to geneticist Michael Majerus this definition should be distinguished from the scientific definition. In plants there are cases where male flowers and hermaphrodite flowers occur on the same plant ( andromonoecy) or female flowers and hermaphrodite flowers on the same plant ( gynomonoecy). There are also species where hermaphrodites exist alongside males (called androdioecy) or alongside females (called gynodioecy), or all three exist in the same species (called trioecy) these three systems are sometimes called mixed breeding systems. Animal species having different sexes, male and female, are called gonochoric, which is the opposite of hermaphrodite. Hermaphroditism is also found in some fish species and to a lesser degree in other vertebrates. For example, the great majority of tunicates, pulmonate molluscs, opisthobranch, earthworms, and slugs are hermaphrodites. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which either partner can act as the female or male. Many taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrates) do not have separate sexes. In reproductive biology, a hermaphrodite ( / h ər ˈ m æ f r ə ˌ d aɪ t/) is an organism that has both kinds of reproductive organs and can produce both gametes associated with male and female sexes.
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