Reptile & Amphibian Forums

that should not go unnoticed!

i am currently writing up some multiple paternity data we have on russian tortoises and i've been crawling through the sperm storage, multiply mating literature.

there is a rather large and convincing body of evidence documenting increases in fertility rates and fecundity. as chris pointed out, but was subsequently lost in translation, this is a widespread biological phenomenon. it has been documented in just about every insect looked at, birds, lizards, chelonians, and mammals (rodents, marsupials, and possibly cats). it seems to work for both spontaneous and induced ovulators.

breeders take note, there is great evidence here which may be able to improve fertility rates!

as others have stated below, it does not make evolutionary sense that an individual would waste energy on poor reproductive rates. the genes regulating such sub-optimal mechanisms would fall out of the population very rapidly.

for those of you who have large collections of drys, you might give this a try.

matt

i agree, there is no ecological merit in wasting energy on dud eggs- big ones- each breeding attempt. it would be interesting for someone to perform DNA analysis on a clutch of wild hatchlings, see what the paternity is. i know it is difficult to locate eggs, but possibly track a gravid female , have her lay eggs in captivity and test the resulting hatchlings. then release them...

"i agree, there is no ecological merit in wasting energy on dud eggs- big ones- each breeding attempt. it would be interesting for someone to perform DNA analysis on a clutch of wild hatchlings, see what the paternity is. i know it is difficult to locate eggs, but possibly track a gravid female , have her lay eggs in captivity and test the resulting hatchlings. then release them..."

i think it would be difficult to do logistically and legally. some have mentioned the permits to do such a thing are bearish.

a "faster" and certainly logistically/legally easier way would be to allow more than one male (one at a time of course) to lock with a female. this way you know the genotype of all potential parents, then assessing the paternity of the offspring is much easier. if you don't know the genotypes of the possible dads, then you have the potential problem of misidentifying two dads when you might just have a heterozygote.

of course someone needs to get the DNA library worked up -- not trivial.

matt