5 ms·
I think what surprises me most about this is that the Boa produced only female offspring. Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system http://e
by philh 12y ago
I think what surprises me most about this is that the Boa produced only female offspring.
Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system - humans have XY chromosomes, with XX female and XY male. Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones. But WW turns out to be viable, and ZZ either doesn't happen, or isn't viable.
I'd previously read about this happening in Komodo dragons, which also have ZW, and there the viable offspring were all male - which makes slightly more sense to me, genetically speaking, because the children can mate with the mother to get slightly more genetic diversity in their offspring.
Quick google, http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001643 http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo... might shed some light on this: in boas, the W and Z chromosomes look identical, in other species they look very different. That might (partially?) explain why WW is viable. But I'm way out of my depth here.
- kijin 12y agoYeah, I found that surprising as well. Most of the other species mentioned in the article (other than the whiptail lizard) produce males when they reproduce asexually, perhaps so that they can return to sexual reproduction once the males are mature. Producing more females when there's a shortage of males doesn't seem to be a particularly useful trait, but maybe it's too early to generalize too much on the basis of what is already highly exceptional.
- vorg 12y ago> Producing more females when there's a shortage of males doesn't seem to be a particularly useful trait Given that mammal females are XX and can only parthenogenesize females, never males, because of the lack of any Y chromosome, perhaps that's why mammals don't reproduce asexually frequently compared to ZW birds and other ZW animals.
- vorg 12y ago> Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones. If the female is ZW, then I'd expect three possible choices -- unviable WW, female ZW, and male ZZ -- because both Z and W are present in the female.
- lvs 12y agoIf this article is meant to have some seasonal relevance, then we can only conclude from genetics that Jesus was a woman.
- lol123456 12y agoThis article was meant to have seasonal relevance. It might have been published for maximum eye balls. It could also be fake or an article published earlier in 2002. Bribed to publish ? Of course the reality of the matter is, journalists pretend to be surprised when scientists don't know anything, which is true. The all-knowing wise people of HN assert that both journalists and scientists don't know anything. The actual reality is that neither HN nor journalists nor scientists nor anyone knows anything about reality.