{"id":52728,"date":"2021-11-20T09:55:19","date_gmt":"2021-11-20T14:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=52728"},"modified":"2021-11-21T09:52:01","modified_gmt":"2021-11-21T14:52:01","slug":"kleptogenesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=52728","title":{"rendered":"Kleptogenesis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lorraine Boissoneault, \"Genetic Mystery: The all-female salamanders of the Great Lakes<\/a>\", Great Lakes Now<\/em> 11\/2\/2021:<\/p>\n

<\/a>Looking at them, you wouldn\u2019t guess that the unisexual Ambystoma salamanders are any different than the other members of what was once considered their group.<\/span><\/p>\n

These interlopers were previously grouped with five other mole salamander species: the tiger salamanders with yellow stripes; the blue-spotted salamander, marked as its name suggests; the brownish smallmouth salamander and Jefferson salamander; and the pale streamside salamander. All five species have lithe, wet bodies, bulbous eyes, and cutely smiling faces.<\/span><\/p>\n

What sets the mysterious unnamed Ambystoma species apart is something that can only be seen by looking at their genetics. They\u2019re an all-female lineage\u2014and they steal genetic material from all five other species of salamander in their region, a feat that would seem impossible if not for the fact that these lady salamanders have been around for more than 5 million years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe often get asked, \u2018What is the species name for these organisms?\u2019 And the answer is that we don\u2019t have one because they don\u2019t play by the rules of what we would typically call a species,\u201d said Rob Denton, professor of biology at Marian University.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Scientists aren\u2019t quite sure of how these salamanders manage to combine so much divergent genetic material without their offspring having any ill effects. The reproductive process is a little more straightforward. Male salamanders of all these species will leave packets of sperm around the wetlands in the spring. The unisexual females seek out the sperm, absorb it into their own genitals, and this stimulates reproduction. The females can continue seeking out sperm packets and incorporating all that genetic material into their offspring, or they can make simple clones.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the females who belong to one of the distinct species, whether it\u2019s the blue-spotted salamanders or the Jefferson salamanders, they can\u2019t mate with males of different species.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because the process is thought to be totally unique to this line of unisexual salamanders, it was given its own name: kleptogenesis, in which females steal genetic material.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Barbara Mable, \"Sex in the postgenomic era.<\/a>\"\u00a0Trends in ecology & evolution<\/i> 2007:<\/p>\n

In combining genomic\u00a0in situ<\/em> hybridization (GISH), microsatellite genotyping and mitochondrial DNA sequencing with >20 years of data on genomic composition, Bogart et al.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0have coined the term \u2018kleptogenesis\u2019 to describe the reproductive mode used by these salamanders. They propose that the unisexuals arose through an ancient hybridization event between an\u00a0A. laterale<\/em>\u00a0male and an\u00a0A. barboui<\/em>-like female. The most intriguing implication of these studies is that the\u00a0A. barbouri<\/em> nuclear genome has been completely replaced, while leaving its mitochondrial genome behind. The current genomic composition of the hybrids has resulted from genome swapping and whole-genome additions as the unisexuals moved into sympatry with other sexual species from which they were able to \u2018steal\u2019 sperm (kleptos<\/em>\u00a0=\u00a0to steal).<\/span><\/p>\n

The cited source for the coinage is Bogart, James P., Ke Bi, Jinzong Fu, Daniel WA Noble, and John Niedzwiecki. \"Unisexual salamanders (genus Ambystoma) present a new reproductive mode for eukaryotes.<\/a>\"\u00a0Genome<\/i> 2007:<\/p>\n

To persist, unisexual and asexual eukaryotes must have reproductive modes that circumvent normal bisexual reproduction. Parthenogenesis, gynogenesis, and hybridogenesis are the modes that have generally been ascribed to various unisexuals. Unisexual Ambystoma are abundant around the Great Lakes region of North America, and have variously been described as having all 3 reproductive modes. Diploid and polyploid unisexuals have nuclear genomes that combine the haploid genomes of 2 to 4 distinct sexual species, but the mtDNA is unlike any of those 4 species and is similar to another species, Ambystoma barbouri. To obtain better resolution of the reproductive mode used by unisexual Ambystoma and to explore the relationship of A. barbouri to the unisexuals, we sequenced the mitochondrial control and highly variable intergenic spacer region of 48 ambystomatids, which included 28 unisexuals, representatives of the 4 sexual species and A. barbouri. The unisexuals have similar sequences over most of their range, and form a close sister group to A. barbouri, with an estimated time of divergence of 2.4-3.9 million years ago. Individuals from the Lake Erie Islands (Kelleys, Pelee, North Bass) have a haplotype that demonstrates an isolation event. We examined highly variable microsatellite loci, and found that the genetic makeup of the unisexuals is highly variable and that unisexual individuals share microsatellite alleles with sexual individuals within populations. Although many progeny from the same female had the same genotype for 5 microsatellite DNA loci, there was no indication that any particular genome is consistently inherited in a clonal fashion in a population. The reproductive mode used by unisexual Ambystoma appears to be unique; we suggest kleptogenesis as a new unisexual reproductive mode that is used by these salamanders<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The male salamanders of various Ambystoma species \"leave packets of sperm around the wetlands in the spring\", so why call the female\/unisexual Ambystomas' actions \"stealing\" rather than \"gathering\" or \"harvesting\"? Maybe it's because there's a well-known Greek compound element klepto-<\/em> for thief, used in English words like keptomania<\/em> and kleptocrat<\/em>, whereas English derivatives of e.g. \u1f00\u03b3\u03b5\u03af\u03c1\u03c9<\/a> \"of things,\u00a0collect,\u00a0gather<\/span><\/i>\" appear not to exist. Or maybe what these salamanders is doing is perceived as immoral as well as unusual?<\/p>\n

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The Great Lakes Now<\/em> article is the most recent of several example where this word, and the concepts behind it, have appeared in the mass media:<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Rachel Feltman, \"How a female-only line of salamanders \u2018steals\u2019 genes from unsuspecting males<\/a>\", Popular Science 6\/14\/2017
\nMisti Crane, \"Unisexual salamander evolution: A long, strange trip<\/a>\", OSU News<\/em> 7\/25\/2018
\nKatie Garrett & Daniel Peterschmidt, \"The Unisexuals: A Story of Salamanders and Sex<\/a>\", Science Friday<\/em> 5\/22\/2019<\/p>\n

[h\/t Robert Shackleton]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lorraine Boissoneault, \"Genetic Mystery: The all-female salamanders of the Great Lakes\", Great Lakes Now 11\/2\/2021: Looking at them, you wouldn\u2019t guess that the unisexual Ambystoma salamanders are any different than the other members of what was once considered their group. These interlopers were previously grouped with five other mole salamander species: the tiger salamanders with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words-words-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52728"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52759,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52728\/revisions\/52759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}