In the rapidly developing, diploid amphibian Xenopus tropicalis, genetics can be married to the already powerful tools of the amphibian system to overcome a disability that has hampered Xenopus laevis as a model organism: the difficulties inherent in conducting genetic analyses in a tetraploid organism with a longer generation time. We describe here a gynogenetic screen to uncover naturally occ...

The loach (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus) is an excellent animal model to elucidate biological origin and evolutionary significance of genome duplication and unisexual reproduction because artificially induced and naturally occurring polyploids and parthenogenetic (gynogenetic, androgenetic) animals can be compared. First, we summarize the chromosome manipulation techniques to induce triploids and...

Despite the advantage of avoiding the costs of sexual reproduction, asexual vertebrates are very rare and often considered evolutionarily disadvantaged when compared to sexual species. Asexual species, however, may have advantages when colonizing (new) habitats or competing with sexual counterparts. They are also evolutionary older than expected, leaving the question whether asexual vertebrates...

Gynogenesis is a peculiar mode of clonal reproduction in which eggs need to be pseudo-fertilized by sperm, but the male genes are not passed on to the offspring. One mating system in which gynogenesis is found involves a unisexual hybrid, the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), which typically uses males of its two parental species as sperm donors. Most gynogenetic lineages do not sexually parasit...

Analysis of the developmental capacities of androgenetic and gynogenetic mouse embryos (bearing two paternal or two maternal pronuclei, respectively) revealed a defect in blastocyst formation of androgenetic, but not gynogenetic, embryos that was a function of the maternal genotype. Androgenetic embryos constructed using fertilized eggs from C57BL/6 or (B6D2)F1 mice developed to the blastocyst ...