Isospory

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A reproductive strategy in certain plants and algae involving the production of spores that are uniform in size and type
2. The condition of producing spores that are identical in morphology, often seen in specific life cycles of plants and fungi
3. The occurrence of producing spores which are all the same size and structure, as part of an organism's reproductive process

Etymology: Isospory is a technical coinage rather than an old word. It was built in the early twentieth century in botany from "iso-", the Greek prefix meaning "equal" or "same," and "spore," which comes from Greek "spora," meaning "seed" or "sowing." Botanists needed a term to contrast with "heterospory," the condition in which an organism produces two different kinds of spores, small male microspores and large female megaspores, and the pairing of these terms helped classify plant groups by their reproductive strategies. The distinction matters most in the evolution of land plants. Most ferns and their relatives are isosporous, releasing spores that look alike and can each grow into a gametophyte that carries both sexes, whereas seed plants are heterosporous. Isospory is therefore a marker of an earlier stage in plant reproduction, and the word helps researchers describe where a given group sits on that evolutionary path.

Synonyms: homospory

Antonyms: heterospory