Lizard Moms Pass On Gender-Specific Genes

GreenBeings| Lizard moms have solved an evolutionary challenge of how to get the right fitness genes to the right gender. Brown anole female lizards mate with several males, then ‘shuffle their sperm deck’ to so speak, producing more sons with sperm from large fathers and more daughters from sperm with smaller ones.

“This species has figured out a clever way to pass on genes with gender-specific effects on fitness,” said Bob Cox, the lead author on the paper and a post-doctoral researcher at Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H. “Usually, when natural selection pulls genes in different directions for each gender, the species faces an evolutionary dilemma. But these lizards have solved this puzzle, they’ve figured out how to get the right genes into the right gender.”

Researchers will next investigate just how females control the gender of their progeny. Positively fascinating! via Science Daily