No sex please, we’re rotifers: Tiny aquatic animals can clone themselves using progesterone
Monday, June 14, 2010 - 17:30
in Biology & Nature
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.