What does dimorphism mean?
dimorphism. [ dī-môr′fĭz′əm ] n. Existence in two shapes or forms, especially the existence within a species of two distinct forms that differ in one or more characteristics, such as size or shape.
What is gender dimorphism?
Sexual dimorphism is the systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species. For example, in some species, including many mammals, the male is larger than the female. In others, such as some spiders, the female is larger than the male.
What is dimorphism in a species?
sexual dimorphism, the differences in appearance between males and females of the same species, such as in colour, shape, size, and structure, that are caused by the inheritance of one or the other sexual pattern in the genetic material.
What is an example of dimorphic?
The golden orb-weaver spider, for example, is spectacularly dimorphic: the female may be 20 times the size of the male, and she usually ends up eating him, sometimes even while he’s mating with her. Many sea creatures, including many fish, take care of gender problems by simply changing from one sex into the other.
What does dimorphism mean in microbiology?
Dimorphism is defined as the ability of a fungus to generate free-living vegetative cell types that are either yeast or hyphal (Fig. Simple cartoons of the environmental and host forms of each fungal species are shown. In the environmental hyphal form of these organisms, oval swellings depict vegetative conidia.
What are dimorphic leaves?
Dimorphic – Literally, dimorphic means occurring in two forms. When used in descriptions of evergreen azaleas (Rhododendron subgenus Tsutsusi), the term dimorphic refers to the two forms of leaves found on a given plant, not to the sequence of their emergence and senescence.
What does facial dimorphism mean?
Facial sexual dimorphism emerges at puberty: as the size and shape of the male and female faces increase with age, faces begin to show different secondary sexual characteristics (i.e., masculine or feminine).
What are dimorphic traits?
The term dimorphism denotes a trait that occurs in two distinct forms or morphs within a given species and traits that differ consistently between males and females are sexual dimorphisms. Sexually dimorphic traits may differ so radically between sexes that they can be reliably used to differentiate males from females.
What is dimorphism in microbiology?
What is thermal dimorphism?
The thermally dimorphic fungi are a unique group of fungi within the Ascomycota phylum that respond to shifts in temperature by converting between hyphae (22–25°C) and yeast (37°C). This morphologic switch, known as the phase transition, defines the biology and lifestyle of these fungi.