Birders
Related: About this forumAfter 30 Years of Breeding Condors, a Secret Comes Out
When you get to be as endangered as the California condor, your sex life becomes a highly public affair. Since 1983, when the number of California condors in existence was a mere 22, biologists have been carefully breeding the birds in captivity. They kept track of who mated with whom, how many offspring they had, and when those offspring were released into the wild. All of this is logged in the official California-condor studbook.
So it was quite a shock when, a few years ago, scientists conducting DNA tests as part of routine research found two condors with unexpected paternity. These two birdsknown by their studbook numbers as SB260 and SB517were not related to the fathers recorded in the studbook. Actually, they had no fathers at all. A full 100 percent of their DNA had come from their respective mothers. We were confronted with this inexplicable data set, says Oliver Ryder, a conservation geneticist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
The only possible explanation was a strange one: The eggs that produced these two condors must have essentially fertilized themselves without any sperm. The phenomenon is known as parthenogenesis or, colloquially, virgin birth. (The two mothers in this case werent technically virgins; they had previously produced normal chicks with the male they were housed with. As I said, not much sexual privacy when youre a California condor.) Parthenogenesis has been studied in other birds, like turkeys and chickens. Its also been documented in snakes, lizards, sharks, rays, and bony fishboth in captivity and more recently in the wild. Many of these discoveries were accidental, and all of these accidents have scientists wondering if parthenogenesis is not as rare as once thought.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/california-condors-are-capable-virgin-birth/620517/
3auld6phart
(1,045 posts)Bible punchers take note. Gives a lift to your
Virgin birth story,eh.
hunter
(38,310 posts)And baby Jesus was a girl!
IrishAfricanAmerican
(3,815 posts)Backseat Driver
(4,390 posts)Would a DNA test reveal chimeras? Two different sets of DNA in the offspring?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29
Ducks can apparently change their sex/gender and generate the appropriate equipment for mating.