dragonlady7

would be awesome to attempt to get BSW turkeys to parthenogate, whatever that word is, anyway, listen, dragon wife

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laurelnose https://laurelnose.tumblr.com/post/666446448501669888/three-people-sent-me-articles-on-parthenogenesis :

three people sent me articles on parthenogenesis in California condors today. you talk about accidental parthenogen baby acquisition through oviposition kink one time and you’re The Parthenogenesis Guy forever!! (I love you all.)

anyways this is a neat new fact and a pretty interesting wrinkle to condor propagation. most likely a problematic one, given that avian parthenogenesis is on the whole somewhat less viable than reptile and fish parthenogenesis, but we’ll see! that said, I’m not really surprised that in such a small and extensively genetically monitored population we would end up finding evidence of parthenogenesis; most of the rarity of parthenogenesis seems to be because except in the extreme cases where females are kept in captivity without contact with males their entire lives, you can’t confirm it without a frankly ridiculous amount of genetic testing. i’m not overly familiar with the situation with avians, but for instance while it’s still (iirc) less than a dozen chondrichthyan species confirmed as parthenogenetic, I expect parthenogenesis is actually extremely widespread amongst chondrichthyans and we just can’t detect it. (it’s never been confirmed in chimaeriforms but I would be absolutely shocked if it turned out that none of an almost entirely deep-water clade were parthenogenetic. ...it would also have super weird phylogenetic implications if that were the case but that’s all hypothetical. anyways.) it’s likely similarly much more widespread than we know of in avians and even non-avian reptiles.

(honestly how many new species have to be confirmed as parthenogenetic before journalists stop breathlessly going “is parthenogenesis far more common than we used to think it was!?” every single time. the answer at this point is conclusively yes, LMFAO.)

however I’m really fascinated by a bit in the Atlantic’s coverage of the condor news—they offhandedly mention that parthenogenesis occurs at different rates in different species (I was aware of this) and it also apparently occurs at different rates between different domestic lines (I was not aware of this):

3 percent in commercial turkeys, to 16.9 percent in Beltsville small white turkeys.

16.9% in Beltsville small whites! almost six times the rate of parthenogenesis in a different line of the same fucking species! what! what!! what is parthenogenesis in turkeys linked to? how the fuck did we accidentally select for that?!

Keep reading https://laurelnose.tumblr.com/post/666446448501669888/three-people-sent-me-articles-on-parthenogenesis

LOL as one of the people who sent you that link I apologize, I should’ve expected others to do so, but I was just really excited because while I haven’t had any time to write in a solid week I’ve also been attempting to mentally outline the parthenogenesis bit of the fic, so it was oddly synchronous…

what we need is parthenogenesis in hogs, because keeping a boar is so damned expensive. RIP Arthur, I will be back in spring to try and dig up your skull…

We’ve never tried to raise turkeys from eggs but if only we could get funding I’d love to try it… I do have a perfectly good incubator sitting right here not getting used…. and we’re stuck raising Broad Breasted Whites which can’t reproduce naturally and are too large for most of our customers…. but you can’t get Beltsville Small Whites anywhere for love or money, so.

god i wish i was good at science (Your picture was not posted)