No sex please, we’re rotifers: Tiny aquatic animals can clone themselves using progesterone

A new study shows that humans and tiny aquatic animals known as rotifers have something important in common when it comes to sex. Barely visible without a microscope, rotifers eat algae and serve primarily as food for baby fish. But the females of certain rotifer species can do something quite unusual: they can reproduce asexually by creating clones of themselves, or they can initiate a process that allows sexual reproduction by producing male rotifers. The chemical mediator for this change from asexual to sexual reproduction turns out to be progesterone.

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