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Female Shark Learns To Reproduce Without Males After Years Alone (newscientist.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: A female shark separated from her long-term mate has developed the ability to have babies on her own. Leonie the zebra shark (Stegostoma fasciatum) met her male partner at an aquarium in Townsville, Australia, in 1999. They had more than two dozen offspring together before he was moved to another tank in 2012. From then on, Leonie did not have any male contact. But in early 2016, she had three baby sharks. Intrigued, Christine Dudgeon at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and her colleagues began fishing for answers. One possibility was that Leonie had been storing sperm from her ex and using it to fertilize her eggs. But genetic testing showed that the babies only carried DNA from their mum, indicating they had been conceived via asexual reproduction. Some vertebrate species have the ability to reproduce asexually even though they normally reproduce sexually. These include certain sharks, turkeys, Komodo dragons, snakes and rays. However, most reports have been in females who have never had male partners. In sharks, asexual reproduction can occur when a female's egg is fertilized by an adjacent cell known as a polar body, Dudgeon says. This also contains the female's genetic material, leading to "extreme inbreeding", she says. "It's not a strategy for surviving many generations because it reduces genetic diversity and adaptability." Nevertheless, it may be necessary at times when males are scarce. "It might be a holding-on mechanism," Dudgeon says. "Mum's genes get passed down from female to female until there are males available to mate with." It's possible that the switch from sexual to asexual reproduction is not that unusual; we just haven't known to look for it, Dudgeon says.
It's the Messiah! Bow down before them and adore them!
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
"Life... Finds a way."
But has she figured out how to grow her own lasers yet?
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
I thought this was interesting. Thanks for posting it!
If men could reproduce after years of trying alone most slashdotters would be dads.
Now, with lasers on their heads!
She _learned_ it did she? Hopefully the same book that taught her about asexual reproduction doesn't have a chapter on lasers.
It has been known that sharks reproduce asexually. The story here is that this is the first time it's been observed in a female shark that has previously had a mate.
This place is filled with people with the world's most experienced experts on asexual reproduction.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
More ammo for the war on men....
Well, in the spirit of South Park and Butters, soon women will only need us for our jokes. Sperm not required apparently.
Well, sperm is eventually needed. FTS: "leading to "extreme inbreeding"".
Extreme inbreeding produces males.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Doomed I tell you! We are no longer needed at all what-so-ever
http://saveie6.com/
... if this has ever happened to a human, or near-human creature through human history.
I'm not even trying to make a joke. This genuinely intrigues me.
What biological mechanisms allow this? And what mechanisms trigger it?
Prior art in humans.
So far no conclusive results have been reported from male-male mating, but tests continue.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Lesbian sharks are always relevant. If you don't like it, you need to address it directly with them.
BTW... Never, ever, tell an angry lesbian shark that she's wrong. Nothing good will ever come from it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
WTF? This has been known for decades.
I'm sure if you look at the WIkipedia article it has said this for at least several years...
Talk about Fake News.
Yes, perhaps it is better if you talk about fake news. This, however, is about science. I don't think I have read this particular article, but it has been mentioned in different places, and what is new, is the discovery that a female shark that has previously reproduced sexually, has been found to reproduce asexually several years later, which is a first. We had previously seen female sharks that grow up in captivity without males, can do this, but it was not obvious that this could also happen if they had mated in the past - it isn't unreasonable to think that mating might have triggered some mechanism - hormones or whatever - that would make asexual reproduction impossible.
Now there's a redneck sport if there ever was one. I bet there are ATVs involved and everything. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
No. Parthenogenesis (and Gynogenesis) means two X chromosomes, meaning only females can be produced.
So she was in an aquarium alone and separated from her "long-term mate". Sounds pretty evil to me. These places need to be closed down.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Yep. It may be a survival mechanism until males arrive or, if no males show up, continue on with only females. We have a mantid - Brunneria borealis - which has no males at all.
Did they name the baby sharks Jesus II, Jesus III and Jesus IV?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
No, but methinks they ARE working on a method using cats for reproduction. Because when a woman doesn't have a man, she INVARIABLY has at least one cat. . .
"Fishing", got it?
No?
Sharks are fishes, you know?
If needed I can be more explicit, just ask.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Never, ever, tell an angry lesbian shark that she's wrong. Nothing good will ever come from it.
Funny as this is, the post actually had nothing to do with lesbian sharks. Asexual != lesbian.
We'll make great pets
Just wait for the XX males to show up. It happens rarely with humans. Fully functional healthy normal males, except missing a gene(s) that allows sperm to be viable. If that gene or small collection of genes ever get trans-coded from Y to X, we could start to see a jump in the number of XX males as they become able to procreate. Most XX "males" are females with issues, but not all.
For human women. After parthenogenesis is perfected, Human males will become useless parasites, and can finally be eliminated, ending all of the problems on earth.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
i have been telling this to my wife, as she always got pregnant when she was travelling and i was not around. i think missing me caused her to learn how to becomes pregnant by herself.
Because it is so dangerous for a man to get married and have children due to unfair family law. MGTOW. Look it up
While MGTOW is a little interesting, way too much of it is butthurt whining. But the point is taken that an increasing number of men who would make good mates for a woman have done a risk/benefit analysis, and decided that it is not worth it.
And that is kind of a problem. It's a passive avoidance, it isn't illegal. It's like avoiding smoking by not smoking. And as VR and "sex dolls" become more realistic, will only become worse.
What is worse, while stable prudent men decide to pursue their careers and keep their assets, and avoid relationships with females, the jerks and abusers won't change at all.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So the baby is a clone of the mother?
My wife had the same thing happen to her as happened to that shark. I'd been working abroad 6 months and she managed to get pregnant completely on her own. Unbelievable.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
The scientists will have to speak on her behalf, on Maury, Springer, and Wilco.
He's the father!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
At the aquarium, a little kid was heard shouting "go fuck yourself" to the shark tank a few months ago.
#DeleteFacebook
No. Parthenogenesis (and Gynogenesis) means two X chromosomes, meaning only females can be produced.
With turkeys the offspring of this are always male.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
nm
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's clear she was Bi anyway.
Other posts in this thread have pointed out that this is in fact news, because this is the first record of a previously sexually-active female shark giving birth asexually, with no DNA from the father.
And BTW, fake news is not what you seem to think it is. Fake news is written by fake reporters. It is a deliberate fiction intended to deceive, frighten, or enrage the reader. It is not old news. It is not a good-faith news story that contains errors.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
No sperm was harmed in this inbreeding program. It's simply creating your own clone.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I don't think it'd help. Even if their anatomy is the DNA-shooting variety (aka male) they're still the same DNA. They have no genetic diversity, they can't adapt, still extreme inbreeding. It's better than extinction, but it's a stalling technique.
It's every woman's dream to be rid of the need for men!
The real question is how come, after 13 years, they decided to separate what was evidently a very successful pair of sharks? Seems that it would be wise to just keep them together.
Lesbian sharks are always relevant.
Would that be a bull shark?
Nope, no sig
The baby sharks were secretly adopted from the mother shark's niece, who got pregnant out of wedlock.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"How's your wife?" "Leaks a bit"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.