A sexual system is how male and female roles are shared among organisms in a species of animal. It's sometimes called a reproductive or mating system. The boundaries of the different systems are not quite clear because of changes in traits. The sexual systems have been studied for a very long time.
Sexual systems of flowering plants can be either monomorphic or dimorphic. In monomorphic systems, one plant can have different types of flowers, some that are male or female, or both (then it is called a hermaphrodite). Examples are like-monoecy, gynomonoecy, andromonoecy, and trimonoecy. In dimorphic systems, the plant forms only one flower type, male, female, or hermaphrodite. Like - dioecy, gynodioecy, androdioecy, trioecy. Staminate flowers are male and consist only of stamens. They produce pollen. The female flowers are pistillate, containing only pistils. The flowers of hermaphrodite have both male and female parts which are the stamen and pistil, respectively. In animals, similar systems exist where hermaphrodites live alongside single-sex individuals, and these are called mixed sexual systems.
| Sexual system | Androdioecy | Dichogamy | Dioicy | Dioecy | Gonochorism | Gynodioecy | Gynomonoecy | Gynodioecy-Gynomonoecy | Monoicy | Monoecy | Sequential hermaphroditism | Sequential monoecy | Simultaneous hermaphroditism | Synoecy | Trioecy | Trimonoecy |