It may come as a bit of a surprise but the sex of an individual member
of a species can be either (a) genotypically based (i.e., your genes
determine your sex though transgender person may argue the point)
or (b) environmentally determined, for example, sex is temperature
dependent. On the latter point, researchers have found that the
Australian bearded dragon (a lizard) can reverse their sex depending
upon the temperature. One mass media account of this research
is presented on the website of The Scientist; see:
http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/43436/title/Lizard-Swaps-Mode-of-Deciding-Its-Sex/
The original research report was published in Nature; here's the
citation:
C.E. Holleley et al.,(2015). Sex reversal triggers the rapid transition
from genetic to temperature-dependent sex. Nature, 523:79-82,
The article (actually a research letter) can be accessed here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v523/n7558/full/nature14574.html
Now, the idea of temperature dependent sex reversal is not new,
for example, see:
Standora, E. A., & Spotila, J. R. (1985). Temperature dependent
sex determination in sea turtles. Copeia, 711-722.
Ospina-Alvarez, N., & Piferrer, F. (2008). Temperature-dependent sex
determination in fish revisited: prevalence, a single sex ratio response
pattern, and possible effects of climate change. PLoS One, 3(7),
e2837-e2837.
What makes the new research news is captured in this quote from the
abstract:
|...Here we make the first report of reptile sex reversal in the wild,
in
|the Australian bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps), and use sex-reversed
|animals to experimentally induce a rapid transition from genotypic to
|temperature-dependent sex determination. Controlled mating of normal
|males to sex-reversed females produces viable and fertile offspring
whose
|phenotypic sex is determined solely by temperature
(temperature-dependent
|sex determination).
One concern raised by this research is: as climate gets warmer, the
tendency for temperature based sex-reversal increases and members
of a species whose sex is genotypically determined will ultimately be
eliminated from the species, making all members sex temperature
dependent.
I wonder what the religious implications are. ;-)
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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