Definitions of hermaphroditism, dioecious and monoecious?

Question

What is the difference between these terms "monoecious","Hermaphrodite". My lecturer says hermaphrodite is a zoological term and monoecious is botanical term, but in contrary to it, in my textbook both of these terms are used both botany and zoology. So what is the actual difference?

Answer 1

I think there might be a mix-up of "monoecious" and "monocot" here. Monocot is a plant seed type.

All Monoecious organisms are Hermaphrodites, but not all Hermaphrodites are Monoecious. Monoecious means the organism has both male and female reproductive organs for their whole lifetime.

There are other types of hermaphrodites such as sequential hermaphrodites which have one sex for one phase of their life, and then another sex for another phase. An example of this is clownfish - in a communal group most are a neutral sex, the largest is always female, the second largest is always male. If the female dies, the male becomes female and the largest neutral sex fish becomes male.

Dioecious is an organism to have two sexes - one with male reproductive organs, and one with female reproductive organs.

Both plants and animals can be either monoecious or dioecious.