"Female Cockroaches Sync Up Their Virgin Births" Topic

"Female cockroaches don't need a mate to lay eggs, but they do like company. New research finds that virgin female cockroaches housed together are quicker to produce offspring than virgin females living alone.

It isn't particularly pleasant to imagine this happening under the fridge, but female American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) can produce eggs by parthenogenesis, a type of asexual reproduction. Like many other arthropods that can reproduce in this way, cockroaches tend to do so only if males aren't available; offspring born by parthenogenesis develop from the maternal egg cell alone, so they have less genetic diversity than offspring created by sexual reproduction.

For American cockroaches, eggs produced by parthenogenesis have a lower rate of survival than egg clutches produced after roach sex, but the offspring of the single moms are capable of surviving and mating. Researchers from Hokkaido University in Japan were curious about what prompts roaches to go with this less-successful reproductive strategy. [Animal Sex: 7 Tales of Naughty Acts in the Wild…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I really want to know how much was spent on that study.

Most importantly, did they get written consent from the roaches? :)

Dan

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand