Has Wolbachia been documented to infect “millions” of invertebrates?

Well, honestly I had thought about it…

A REVIEW of all the world’s cloned animals suggests that every one of them is genetically and physically defective. The study coincides with claims by researchers trying to create the first cloned human. In Italy, Dr Severino Antinori has claimed that three women are pregnant with cloned babies; in America, Dr Panayiotis Zavos has said he will achieve such a pregnancy within two years. Wilmut said his latest research suggested that a cloned human would also be at huge risk of genetic defects. This was a clear warning that “nobody should be attempting to clone a child”.
She [Dolly] was born with chromosomes that have shortened telomeres the DNA tips that protect the end of chromosomes.

decades of extensive laboratory experimentation and millions on research, turns out you men are useful for something afterall.

What will science discover next?

Sharon: I was thinking along that lines that the ideas might be revenge for what your link says. Really, society would probably be better off without men doing their testosterone induced thing. My train of thought was that if women see that it was possible to get rid of us and still survive as a species then they might want to implement that.

Yeah, I get myself in trouble sometimes. It’s standard stand up comedy routine fare, though.

ohhhh, you mean what the male has been doing over the past eon?

Wolbachia mediated speciation has been proposed, but I’m not sure if there is much evidence to support this hypothesis. I follow the wolbachia literature enough to have heard of it, but not enough to know whether anyone has conclusive evidence of it occurring in the wild.

“I’m guessing that the “sperm-free embryos” that become females are clones of the mother.”

Are they clones or are the they product of selfing? Both processes will decrease the genetic variation in the population, but they are different. Aren’t sperm-free diploid progeny due to the fusion of a polar body with the oocyte?

Turner JM, Mahadevaiah SK, Ellis PJ, Mitchell MJ, Burgoyne PS. Pachytene asynapsis drives meiotic sex chromosome inactivation and leads to substantial postmeiotic repression in spermatids.

Toure A, Clemente EJ, Ellis P, Mahadevaiah SK, Ojarikre OA, Ball PA, Reynard L, Loveland KL, Burgoyne PS, Affara NA. Identification of novel Y chromosome encoded transcripts by testis transcriptome analysis of mice with deletions of the Y chromosome long arm. Genome Biol. 2005;6(12):R102. Epub 2005 Dec 2.

Ward MA, Burgoyne PS. The effects of deletions of the mouse Y chromosome long arm on sperm function–intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)-based analysis. Biol Reprod. 2006 Apr;74(4):652-8. Epub 2005 Dec 14.

Ellis PJ, Clemente EJ, Ball P, Toure A, Ferguson L, Turner JM, Loveland KL, Affara NA, Burgoyne PS. Deletions on mouse Yq lead to upregulation of multiple X- and Y-linked transcripts in spermatids. Hum Mol Genet. 2005 Sep 15;14(18):2705-15. Epub 2005 Aug 8.

nice post.
so much for some who mistakingly believe in the “creator God” who has it in for females and personal preference for patriarchal systems over matriarchal.
good post.

…always interesting to find species, where the female plays a dominate role as with female worker bees who toss out the drones and keep the stores all for themselves..

caste of the Honeybees
Worker bees, which are half the size and weight of the Drones, pick up the larger Drones, carry them to the entrance and toss them to the ground. …

though in Carl’s example it’s a lose-lose situation for either sex.

The Brains of Female Hyena Twins
It appears that in many species of fishes if you remove the dominant male from a social group, the largest female then becomes male. …

Seems a lot of species naturally change sex, and that some scientists tend to gloss over homosexual behavior in the wild.

And, Black Widow has got a really bad rap…

Myth: When black widow spiders mate, the female always kills and eats the male.
Fact: This myth (which is not totally false, but very far from true) is believed even by scientists, and can be found in many ecology textbooks! It’s depressing; the authors are obviously copying each other and have never actually watched black widows mate in the field. [...] there are many different species worldwide in the black-widow group (the genus Latrodectus) [...] in the past most observations of mating took place in laboratory cages, where males could not escape. [...] Of U.S. species, mate cannibalism occurs sometimes in Latrodectus mactans, the eastern black widow, but most males survive to mate another day. In the other two black species, including the western black widow L. hesperus (only species west of Kansas), mate cannibalism has never been observed in the wild!
Source: Black Widow Myth

And, a lot more could be said on these issues. . .

I’m guessing that the “sperm-free embryos” that become females are clones of the mother. The loss of genetic diversity is catastrophic: any pathogen that would harm the mother would harm the daughters in the same way. It is a good hedge-bet by the Wolbachia, however, as it causes the bacteria to survive for another generation of hosts, as it waits for males to show up and contribute new genes.

Of course, I am just guessing. =)