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Who needs males when you have parthenogenesis? With a little help from science, biologist Peter Baumann and collagues have created an all-female lizard species:
Researchers have bred a new species of all-female lizard, mimicking a process that has happened naturally in the past but has never been directly observed.
“It’s recreating the events that lead to new species,” said cell biologist Peter Baumann of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, whose new species is described May 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It relates to the question of how these unisexual species arise in the first place.”
Vietnamese herpetologist Ngo Van Tri noticed something strange about the tanks of lizards at the small diners in the village of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. They were all female, which is odd for the species Leiolepis ngovantrii, which is what they were thought to be. So he called a friend and fellow scientist at La Sierra University in California.
Dr. Lee Grismer and his son, Jesse Grismer, a doctoral candidate, flew all the way to Hanoi and then faced a grueling two-day motorcycle trip out to a restaurant where the owner promised to set aside a stash of the creatures for study.
But there was a little problem, says Grismer.
“Unfortunately, the owner wound up getting drunk, and grilled them all up for his patrons… so when we got there, there was nothing left.”
Faced with an empty tank and nearly dashed hopes, the men asked around at other cafes in the area for the local delicacy, and hired children to track down as many of the lizards as they could find.
What they received were 60 females -of a previously unknown lizard species that reproduces without males! Still, Grismer was obliged to eat some lizards to show proper etiquette to the local restaurant. How does it taste?
“You take a bite out of it and it feels like something very old and dead in your mouth,” he said.
(Image credit: Lee Grismer/La Sierra University)
Photo: Rebecca A. Pyles
Scientists studying a species of Australian lizard called the yellow-bellied three-toed skink discovered that they’re seeing evolution in action: the lizard lays eggs on coasts but birth babies in mountains.
Evolutionary records shows that nearly a hundred reptile lineages have independently made the transition from egg-laying to live birth in the past, and today about 20 percent of all living snakes and lizards give birth to live young only.
But modern reptiles that have live young provide only a single snapshot on a long evolutionary time line, said study co-author James Stewart, a biologist at East Tennessee State University. The dual behavior of the yellow-bellied three-toed skink therefore offers scientists a rare opportunity.
"By studying differences among populations that are in different stages of this process, you can begin to put together what looks like the transition from one [birth style] to the other."
Link – Thanks Ethan!
Tiny pebble toads have a unique defensive strategy against tarantulas that involves freefalling like a rubber ball.
The above footage is from the "Reptilians and Amphibians" episode of BBC Life, a new epic nature documentary series in the ilk of Planet Earth. The episode also features the incredible Jesus Christ Lizard that walks on water and the unsinkable pygmy gecko.
– via bbc
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