salamander
Mystery: Unisexual salamander species did not turn out to need much genetic diversity
From ScienceDaily: The reproductive history of the unisexual, ladies-only salamander species is full of evolutionary surprises. In a new study, a team of researchers at The Ohio State University traced the animals’ genetic history back 3.4 million years and found some head-scratching details — primarily that they seem to have gone for millions of years without any DNA contributions from male salamanders and still have managed to persist. For some time, it has been assumed that they steal other species’ sperm, “which the males of sexual species deposit on leaves and twigs and the like. When this happens, it stimulates egg production and the borrowed species’ genetic information is sometimes incorporated into the genome of the unisexual salamanders, a process Read More ›