Terms discussed: bifactorial, factor (pl. factors), heterothallism, homothallism, mating factor (pl. mating factors), mating type (pl. mating types)
This term gets used in two senses:
Topics:
Blakeslee
Current Usage
Blakeslee
When Albert Francis Blakeslee discovered mating types in the genus Mucor, he called fungi with definite mating types heterothallic, and fungi without mating types homothallic.
Current Usage
More usually, nowadays, we call a fungus that produces both "male" and "female" reproductive cells homothallic if cells from the same fungal individual can fertilize each other, and heterothallic if the gametes can only be fertilized by gametes from another individual.
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