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? > “The phenomenon arises from an error during female cell division to produce an egg, followed by double-fertilization by two sperm,” he explains. The bird
by saalweachter 3y ago
?
> “The phenomenon arises from an error during female cell division to produce an egg, followed by double-fertilization by two sperm,” he explains.
The bird is a chimera, with a different genome on each side of its body, one male (ZZ), one female (ZW).
- blueflow 3y ago... and they determined that from a photo?
- pryce 3y agoIt's less difficult than you think. Tetragametic chimeras for half-sider budgerigars have different genomes on either side, and the mechanism they occur by is through fusion of two distinct embryos with different DNA[1] Given we know the phenotype of this Green Honeycreeper has a male half and a female half, and given how incredibly likely that the mechanism is following established ways that chimeras occur, it is not hard to say with confidence that the male and female halves of the observed bird are almost certain to have distinct genotypes. Put another way, it would be a much more radical hypothesis that "this halfsider bird with two distinct sexes would not be a chimera." Obviously we'd ideally wish to collect DNA samples from each side of the bird [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-sider_budgerigar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-sider_budgerigar
- saalweachter 3y agoThe interesting part to me is that it's described -- in birds -- as an error in female cell division, rather than the fusion of two embryos. That implies that there are no same-sex chimera birds running around undetected.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoIt's not the first bilateral gynandromorph bird found, though it.may be the first for this species.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- boxed 3y agoI mean... we know how biology works? So...
- jojobas 3y agoChimera is normally an organism formed by two normally fertilized fetuses fusing together. They've made goat/sheep chimerae, crazy stuff.