Gynandromorphs

[Commander]

This chap in the US was lucky enough to spot and photograph a Tiger Swallowtail gynandromorph (http://www.pbase.com/bob_r/mutant) in his garden. This half-male half-female occurrences are extremely rare in the wild, and are highly sought-after by collectors. At the Penang Butterfly Farm's display area, there are two, featuring a Rajah Brooke's Birdwing and Archduke gynandromorphs. As the male and females of these two species are physically very different, it's always amazing to view them.

However, to have shot a live gynandromorph without killing it must be comparable to golf's hole-in-one for a nature photographer. :cheers:

[Common Mime]

Will a gynandromorph mates?

[Sky Blue]

I think the chances to shoot a gynandromorph in the wild is smaller than striking toto...

[Common Mime]

Depends on which prize you are talking about here...

The grand jackpot is equally tiny...

[Sky Blue]

now & then u heard ppl strike toto, how often u heard ppl shoot gynandromorph butt ;P

[Common Mime]

You need to be fair in the frequency those people buy toto and shooting butt though.

[Sky Blue]

true ;-)

[Cigaritis wong]

Looks like a cross between a lime butterfly and some other papilio family. So does gynadromorph mean that?

[Cigaritis wong]

Just did a search of what it means. It means half male half female. So for that particular butt, is it a half male of one species, and a half female of another species or the same species? So is that butt a male or a female or both? How did it come about? I'm confused ....

[Commander]

There are more websites describing the phenomenon of gynandromorphs. It's basically a natural twist of nature when the caterpillar metamorphosises. A particular adult of the species ends up half-male, half-female and shows characteristics of both in the specimen. There are also variations to the phenomenon, whereby the gynandromorph is bilaterally symmetrical, as in the case shown in the website from my first post here, or a mosaic gynandromorph, where the characteristics are not so well defined.

Gynandromophism also occurs in crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans, besides lepidoptera.

[Cigaritis wong]

Thanks..learnt some new. Now not so confused. Initially thought tiger swallowtail is 2 diff type(tiger papilio and swallowtail papilio) of butterfly mix into one. Just found out I'm supposed to take them as one common name.

[Commander]

Yes, it's the same species showing both the male and female characteristics in one single specimen.

Here are some examples :


Speyeria nokomis couerulescens (http://www.insectcompany.com/oddities/speyeria-nokomis-coerulescens.shtml) - A perfect bilateral gynandromorph
Speyeria nokomis appacheana (http://www.insectcompany.com/oddities/speyeria-nokomis-appacheana.shtml)
Papilio androgeus (http://www.insectcompany.com/oddities/papilio-androgeus-mosaic.shtml) - A mosaic gynandromorph

[Grass Demon]

Our simple conclusion is that a gynandromorph is half male and half female, i.e. one side male and the other female. Don't understand why the scientists need so much research to prove this in chickens - see this link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8561814.stm

Scientists solve half-cock chicken mystery

The left, white, side of this bird is male. The right, brown, side is female.


By Huw Williams
BBC Scotland reporter

Researchers say they've solved the mystery of why some chickens hatch out half-male and half-female.
About one in every 10,000 chickens is gynandromorphous, to use the technical term.

Half-and-half chickens give a unique insight into how birds develop
In medieval times, they might have been burned at the stake, as witches' familiars.
But now these chickens are shedding important new light on how birds, and perhaps reptiles, develop.
It used to be thought that hormones instructed cells to develop in male or female-specific ways.
That's what happens in mammals, including humans, and it leads to secondary sexual characteristics like facial hair for men or breasts for women.
But scientists at the Roslin Institute and the University of Edinburgh say they have discovered that bird cells don't need to be programmed by hormones.
Instead they are inherently male or female, and remain so even if they end up mixed together in the same chicken.
It means a half-and-half chicken will have totally different plumage, body shape, and muscle structure on the two halves of its body.
It even affects the wattles on the bird's head, and the spurs on its legs. They will be larger on the cockerel half, and smaller on the hen half, of the same bird.
Practical uses
Dr Michael Clinton of the Roslin Institute led the research, which has just been published in the scientific journal Nature.
He said the findings were a surprise.
Dr Clinton explained: "We looked at these birds initially expecting them not to be half-male and half-female. We thought there'd be a mutation on one side of the body.

Dr Michael Clinton of the Roslin Institute led the research
"But we found that they were half-male and half-female and that's what actually showed us that the system was different in birds and mammals."
And researchers tested their theory with delicate and demanding experiments.
"If you put female cells into a male body they'll develop into the normal tissues, but they'll behave as female cells," Dr Clinton said.
The hope is that these findings might have immediate practical uses for the poultry industry.
Dr Clinton said: "If we can understand what the differences between the male and female identities are, then we can imagine making female birds with the same growth characteristics as males. That would increase productivity, and food security."
But if there are vestiges of the same mechanism in mammals, inherited from our reptilian evolutionary ancestors, then the research could help to answer long-standing mysteries of human health.
Like, for example, why women live longer than men, or why men are more at risk of heart attacks.
"But that will require much more investigation," Dr Clinton insisted.

[Grass Demon]

12 July 2011 Last updated at 12:33

A rare he-she butterfly is born in London's NHM
By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News

Rare beauty: Only 200 of the 4.5 million butterflies in London's Natural History Museum are a mix of two sexes.
A half-male, half-female butterfly has hatched at London's Natural History Museum.
A line down the insect's middle marks the division between its male side and its more colourful female side.
Failure of the butterfly's sex chromosomes to separate during fertilisation is behind this rare sexual chimera.
Once it has lived out its month-long life, the butterfly will join the museum's collection.
Only 0.01% of hatching butterflies are gynandromorphs; the technical term for these strange asymmetrical creatures.
"So you can understand why I was bouncing off of the walls when I learned that... [it] had emerged in the puparium," said butterfly enthusiast Luke Brown from London's Natural History Museum.
Mr Brown built his first butterfly house when he was seven, and has hatched out over 300 thousand butterflies; this is only his third gynandromorph.
Half and half
It is not only the wings that are affected, he explained. The butterfly's body is split in two, its sexual organs are half and half, and even its antennae are different lengths.
"It is a complete split; part-male, part-female... welded together inside," he told the BBC.
The dual-sex butterfly is an example of a Great Mormon, Papilio memnon - a species that is native to Asia.
With a shortage of butterfly-specific gender neutral pronouns, the butterfly is being referred to as "it", and is already middle-aged at three and a half week's old.
So the public has only a narrow window of opportunity to see it alive.
Though rare, gynandromorphy isn't unique to butterflies; individual crabs, lobsters, spiders and chickens have all been found with a mix of two sexes.
There are likely many more cases in the natural world, but sexual chimeras are more difficult to spot in animals where females and males look alike.

[Wanderer]

I missed it by a mth!
:cry:


12 July 2011 Last updated at 12:33

A rare he-she butterfly is born in London's NHM
By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News

Rare beauty: Only 200 of the 4.5 million butterflies in London's Natural History Museum are a mix of two sexes.
A half-male, half-female butterfly has hatched at London's Natural History Museum.
A line down the insect's middle marks the division between its male side and its more colourful female side.
Failure of the butterfly's sex chromosomes to separate during fertilisation is behind this rare sexual chimera.
Once it has lived out its month-long life, the butterfly will join the museum's collection.
Only 0.01% of hatching butterflies are gynandromorphs; the technical term for these strange asymmetrical creatures.
"So you can understand why I was bouncing off of the walls when I learned that... [it] had emerged in the puparium," said butterfly enthusiast Luke Brown from London's Natural History Museum.
Mr Brown built his first butterfly house when he was seven, and has hatched out over 300 thousand butterflies; this is only his third gynandromorph.
Half and half
It is not only the wings that are affected, he explained. The butterfly's body is split in two, its sexual organs are half and half, and even its antennae are different lengths.
"It is a complete split; part-male, part-female... welded together inside," he told the BBC.
The dual-sex butterfly is an example of a Great Mormon, Papilio memnon - a species that is native to Asia.
With a shortage of butterfly-specific gender neutral pronouns, the butterfly is being referred to as "it", and is already middle-aged at three and a half week's old.
So the public has only a narrow window of opportunity to see it alive.
Though rare, gynandromorphy isn't unique to butterflies; individual crabs, lobsters, spiders and chickens have all been found with a mix of two sexes.
There are likely many more cases in the natural world, but sexual chimeras are more difficult to spot in animals where females and males look alike.

[Grass Demon]

Not sure when you were there but the butterfly was already 3 weeks old on 12 July. So you may have missed it by a week.:cry:

[Wanderer]

Not sure when you were there but the butterfly was already 3 weeks old on 12 July. So you may have missed it by a week.:cry:

i was at the natural history museum on the 22 june....maybe its just by a day..

[teotp]

SK: A text-figure of Troides helena cerberus gynandromorph in "A Monograph of the Birdwing Butterflies" volume 2, page 248. The insect was taken in a locality of Cameron Highlands (page 247).

Teo T P

[teotp]

Just did a search of what it means. It means half male half female. So for that particular butt, is it a half male of one species, and a half female of another species or the same species? So is that butt a male or a female or both? How did it come about? I'm confused ....

Gynandromorph of butterfly is individual exhibit the external characters of both male and female in the same body.

To explain why? We have to start from the sex chromosomes. Previously, butterfly sex is determined by the sex chromosomes and are referred to as X and Y (formerly known as Z and W). The male being homogametic XX (or ZZ) and female XY (or ZW). Gynandromorphs are produced by abnormalities in the genetic composition of the butterfly. One way in which they can be produced is the butterfly develops from an egg with two nuclei, one containing XX chromosomes and the other containing XY. Another way is if an error occurs during primary cell division of a male embryo, so that an X chromosome is lost by one of the cells. Since it is the quantity of X chromosomes that determines the sex this results a butterfly is half normal male (XX) and half (X), which is effectively female although there is not Y chromosome (Smart, 1975). The role of Y chromosome has a female-inducing tendency was studied by researchers. They found that in some Lepidoptera species, both X and Y or a balance of Y:X autosomes are involved in the determination and development of sex. In a limited number of species, the female is XO, suggestive that Y chromosome is not involved of sex determination at all (Suomalainen, 1969; Robinson, 1971).

Example: male XX paired with XY female

reproductive cells : X X X Y

offsprings: XX & XY

Teo T P

(If my above reply is not clear enough. Here is the additional note: It is the quantity of X chromosome material or its relative strength which determines the sex. One X chromosome is sufficient only to produce a female, but when there are two X chromosomes, it is sufficient X influence to produce a male.)