parthenogenesis

Termite colonies are families - millions of individual workers all descended from one king and one queen. But the colony itself tends to outlast this initial royal couple. When they die, new kings and queens rise to take their place. These secondary royals are a common feature of some families of termites, and they will often mate with each other for many generations. But there is more to this system than meets the eye. Kenji Matsuura from Okayama University has found that the secondary queens are all genetically identical clones of the original. There are many copies, and they have no…

Many animals have cunning ways of hiding from predators. But the larva of the sand dollar takes that to an extreme - it avoids being spotted by splitting itself into two identical clones. Sand dollars are members of a group of animals called echinoderms, that include sea urchins and starfish. An adult sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus) is a flat, round disc that lives a sedate life on the sea floor. Its larva, also known as a pluteus, is very different, a small, six-armed creature that floats freely among the ocean's plankton. A pluteus can't swim quickly, so there is no escape for one…

'Tis the holiday season and, according to ancient lore, the time when miraculous events are most likely to take place. One of those well-known and miraculous events of ancient days was the birth of a son to a young girl, who, although she was married (Okay, I'm not sure about this part of the story) she was said to be a virgin and the birth to be a miracle. Hmmm. How do you think the news would be received if that sort of thing happened today? Certainly, if the young girl were to produce a grilled cheese sandwich with a burn spot that vaguely resembled a woman in a robe, someone might be…

Nuestra Tiberone de la Conception, Hammerhead shark, Sphyrna zygaena A female hammerhead shark gave birth to a pup in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska in 2001 despite having no contact with a male shark. Thanks to new DNA profiling technology, scientists have been able to show conclusively that the shark pup contained no genetic material from a male. Before you whip out your Book of Revelations and start begging for forgiveness, you should know that this is an example of a naturally occurring phenomenon called parthenogenesis. In parthenogenesis, egg cells develop as an embryo without the…