Futiles And Gender Analysis

There are vast amounts of reptiles in the world and they have a special way they determine their gender, which is an uncommon way of acquiring gender. Offspring gender of many reptile species are determined by the egg incubation temperature. Temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) is an excellent example of phenotypic plasticity (Matsumoto & Crews 2012). The first reported TSD was over 40 years ago in the African agamid lizard, Agama agama (Escobedo-Galvan 2013). Embryos incubated at low temperatures develop as males, while embryos incubated at higher temperatures develop as females (Mork, Czerwinski, & Capel 2014). This evidence proves that temperature affects the outcome of offspring sex. Sex determination can be classified into …show more content…
Scientists Yuiko Matsumoto and David Crews hypothesized that temperature played a key role in the outcome of sex during the development of the embryo in the Trachemys scripta, which is also known as the red-eared slider turtle (2012). Scientists believe that if they can control the temperature to a specific degree, then they will be able to determine the sex of the offspring. The scientists were successful in their research and found that if the temperature is at a specific degree, the offspring sex will either be male or female. The eggs need to be in the incubator during the temperature sensitive time in order for the temperature to affect the sex outcome. The sex also can’t be undone once the embryo starts forming in the direction of female or male after the 7-15 days of …show more content…
The hotter the temperature around the turtle in its egg, the more of a chance it will be female and this can eventually lead to no males being produced (Woolgar, Trocini, & Mitchell 2013). There are many natural disasters that affect the temperature, such as global warming or El Nino. These temperature fluctuations lead to one gender being dominant over the other. This is a negative effect that can have very negative outcomes, such as if there are too many females than the species of the turtle that uses TSD will be led to extinction. The turtles have no way to produce asexually and eventually they will be put on the endangered list (Woolgar, Trocini, & Mitchell 2013). Once the species is put on the endangered list, it is very hard to make the species have the high population they once had. There are many species that go on the endangered list and never revive or make it out to the healthy numbers they once had. The Caretta caretta was once put on the endangered list and scientists didn’t know exactly how it was being put on the endangered list because there was so many being produced. They then figured out that there was many females compared to the males being produced and didn’t know why. The reason why there were so many females out populating the males was because the temperature in the environment was