Gonochoric
Separate sexes for life - an animal is male or female and stays that way, which on a reef is less common than you would expect.
A gonochoric animal is male or female for its whole life, producing only sperm or only eggs. It is the arrangement mammals and birds use, and it is easy to assume it is the norm - which is exactly why it is worth naming on a reef, where it often is not.
Plenty of reef fish are gonochoric: most damselfish, most triggerfish, the majority of the sharks and rays. But a large minority are not. Clownfish start male and turn female, most wrasses and groupers start female and turn male, and some sea slugs are both at once. Where a card in this catalogue says gonochoric, it is ruling those out.
The contrasting terms are hermaphroditic in general, and the two directional forms - protandry, male first, and protogyny, female first - that describe which way a sex change runs.
Found in29
