where are pathenogenic bineos found?

[hornet]

just wondering about the locality of pathenogenic bineos, would the be found western qld or are they further in like round alice springs? Anyone know?

 

[olivehydra]

Yes, and also in turnip patches :wink: Throughout entire QLD, NT and SA.

 

[Sdaji]

hornet: the parthenogenetic Bynoe's geckoes are found in the central and western areas of the distribution of "Heteronitia binoei". Some of the 'bibles' should start publishing the different species separately in the not-too-distant future, but if you're wanting to see the exact distributions sooner, send me an email in early May and I'll dig up a journal reference for you or go through my papers and copy a map for you (sorry I can't do it sooner, time doesn't allow). The sexual species are reasonably well seperated from each other, but the parthenogens almost always occur sympatrically with one of the sexual species. You have to be extremely good to be able to determine whether a female is a parthenogen or a sexual if you've just picked her up in the field (no, I'm not good enough to do this reliably!). To be completely sure without genetic testing you'd need to do virgin experiments on the babies of an individual, which would generally take around a year at best (unless it drops eggs and you get one or more males hatchling, in which case it's a sexual).

Olive seems to know of a Victorian turnip patch they're also found in! Sounds like a nice place to visit!

 

[Basssman]

if they are the same as normal Bynoe's geckos there is a spot a few hours west of the gold coast that there are millions of them

 

[Sdaji]

byup: "Bynoe's Geckoes" are extremely common over most of the continent, even in some areas of the fridge, er, Victoria. Most species of "Heteronotia binoei" are sexual ("normal", involving males and females reproducing in the 'regular' way), the species hornet was asking about is parthenogenetic. The parthenogens are all female and reproduce by cloning themselves with no genetic input from anyone else. The parthenogens are also triploid, which is pretty funky if you're interested in genetics. There aren't any parthenogens near the Gold Coast, but there are some sexual Bynoe's Geckoes, which are very cute and phenotypically, they're quite similar to the parthenogens.

 

[hornet]

i shuld have paid attention in biol, we leart bout haploids and diploids, could you give me a quick run down on those and also a triploid.

 

[Sdaji]

Very basically, a haploid individual has one copy of every gene in its species genome, one set of chromosomes. You and I are diploid, we have two copies of every human gene (some of those copies are not identical, that is, we may have different alleles of those genes). Usually, sperm and eggs are haploid (unless you're an unusual species or something unusual is going on with your sperm or egg production). If you're triploid, you have three copies of every gene in your species genome. You'll have three sets of chromosomes and if you know much about meiosis, you'll be able to imagine the problems you'll face if you want to produce sperm or eggs! This is often the reason that parthenogens are hybrids (or looking at it from the other side, the reason that hybrids are sometimes parthenogens). Polyploidy is very common among parthenogens, tetraploidy apparently occurs from time to time in parthenogenetic Bynoe's Geckoes, through backcrossing to sexuals, with subsequent dropping of a set of chromosomes and a return to triploidy.

 

[hornet]

yes that refreshes my memory, i know a lil about meiosis and mitosis, one is production of sperm cells, the other is just making say 2 skin cells from 1

 

[Sdaji]

Yep, that's right mitotic divisions involve everything doubling, then dividing into two, giving rise to two new somatic cells. The gamete production (meiosis) is different because we don't want all our gametes to be the same as it would severely limit evolution, so everything has to pair up and swap bits and pieces. If there are three sets of chromosomes, one set won't be able to find anything to pair with and that's why, generally, triploids are infertile. In a really small and partially incomplete nut shell, the parthenogenetic Bynoe's Geckoes just look at the situation, see that's not going to work and just give up, dumping their whole genome into the egg rather than half of it. The egg then says "oh wow, I already have enough DNA, I might as well start developing now" and voila, you have a clone. This has been going on for a long time, so it's now possible to have a clone of a gecko which lived over 100,000 years ago living happily in your herp room!

 

[hornet]

god, how u remember all that stuff, it is very interesting tho