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We report on a phylogenetic analysis of correlations between the occurrence of dioecy and several ecological and life‐history attributes: tropical distribution, woody growth form, abiotic pollination, small inconspicuous flowers and inflorescences, many‐flowered inflorescences and fleshy fruits. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain why associations occur between dioecy and several of these attributes, yet most assume that dioecy originates more often in clades with these traits than in clades with alternative character states. To investigate correlations between dioecy and these attributes, and to provide insights into the potential evolutionary pathways that have led to these associations, we assigned states of these traits to genera on a large‐scale molecular phylogeny of the angiosperms; we then used maximum‐likelihood analysis to analyse the presence of correlations and the sequence of …