story identification - Novel where a man is paid to travel to a planet inside a metallic sphere

There was a book (it actually had a second book as well) where a guy gets paid with a group of others to go to a planet that is enclosed in a metallic sphere.

There are many species in this planet. I don't recall if they actually met the races in the first or the second book but there an incident where an alien in the first book ate fruit from a tree that removed any signs of gender from it.

Answer

While not fitting your description correctly, bad memory would justify that as a loose description of some of Larry Niven's Ringworld.

The main protagonists were two humans (male and female), a Kzin (intelligent tiger) and a Pierson's Puppeteer (the organizer of the expedition).

The sphere was most likely the ship bringing the protagonists to the ringworld, a General Products hull

The many different species were hominids on the ringworld, which had evolved to fit all the ecological roles of animals (including disposing of corpses).

One of the travellers in the first novel (a human female) eat from the Tree of Life, becoming a (sexless) Pak Protector in the second novel.

If that rings a bell, they exit the ring in the first novel

through the crater of a "mountain" that actually is a hole left by a meteor strike.

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