Topic #6: March 23 & 30th by Aurora

SNACKS & Who is Who March 30th: Haley

Behavior paper:

Crews D (1987) Courtship in a Unisexual Lizard: A model for brain evolution. Scientific American 89: 116-221.

Genomics paper:

Newton AA, Schnittker RS, Yu1 Z , Munday SS, Baumann DP, NeavesWB and Baumann P (2016) Widespread failure to complete meiosis does not impair fecundity in parthenogenetic whiptail lizards. Development 143:4486-4494.

 

Questions for reading (students must turn in 4 sets throughout semester):

Terms and techniques you didn’t know:

In two sentences or less, give a summary of what was found in this study.

What is meant by looking at figures 1C-1F? Does this follow the assumptions you might make as a reader and the assumptions made by the researchers, or contradict them?

If you were only given two figures with which to present the main findings of this paper, which would you choose, and why?

The genomic architecture underlying this meiotic failure is still unknown. However, in the related species A. uniparens, pseudomating behavior is still maintained. Do you think the conservation of the pseudomating strategy is linked to the architecture beneath the meiotic failure?

 In the particular form exhibited by whiptail lizards, how do you think parthenogenetic reproduction is affected by Muller’s Rachet?

Just for fun, and entirely optional: name your favorite parthenogenetically-reproducing species.