Habitat availability, not genetics alone, determines whether a moss spore becomes male or female

Evidence

Females dominate all aspects of Dicranum life, in numbers, in size, in energy. Whether or not males even exist lies in the power of the females. When a fertilized female produces spores, those spores are without gender. Each one is capable of becoming a male or a female, depending on where it lands. If a spore drifts to a new rock or log that is unoccupied, it will germinate and grow up to be a new full-size female. But should that spore fall onto a patch of Dicranum of the same species, it will sift down among the leaves of the existing females and become trapped there, where the female will control its fate. The female emits a flow of hormones which cause that undecided spore to develop into a dwarf male, a captive mate that will become the father of the next generation in the matriarchy. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 160

Categorization

• XREF: A female-controlled environmental sex determination upends the assumption that sex is fixed at spore formation — mirrors the ch9 playful gendering while showing real biological plasticity. — connects to: Human mating arrangements are freed from species-survival pressure by sheer population numbers — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 164; Sexual difference cannot be reduced to the biology of gametes — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 88; Gender is social structure while sex is genetic endowment
• DEEPTHINKING: Environmental sex determination ceded to the female plant is a striking inversion of the usual male-dominated reading of reproductive power — genuinely paradigm-shifting for how one imagines plant agency.

Broader Connections

• Sexual difference cannot be reduced to the biology of gametes #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 88
• Gender is social structure while sex is genetic endowment #complicates (0.72)