Spermless males fail to remedy the low fecundity of parthenogenetic females in D. melanogaster

2024/12/06 by Lewis I. Held, Surya Banerjee, Dylan W. Schwilk +3 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Reproductive Health and Technologies

paper · doi:10.17912/micropub.biology.001446

openalex publication_date 2024/12/06 · openalex created_date 2025/02/21 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

offers new avenues of research, but this potential is limited by the stock's abysmal fecundity. We tried using spermless (placebo) males to "trick" the virgins into producing more offspring, but the boost that we achieved proved to be short-lived due to premature death of the mothers. To explore the cause of this mortality, we compared the lifespans of parthenogenetic vs. wild-type females when mated with spermless males. We found that parthenogenetic females are less robust than wild-females when raised alone but are more resistant to harm from spermless males.

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