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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Previous sexual partners can influence another mate's offspring ScienceAlert For the first time, Australian scientists have shown that in flies, a female’s previous sexual partner can affect how her offspring from another male turns out. The idea of previous sexual partners influencing how another man’s offspring will turn out was discredited in humans when we started to understand genetics in the early 20th century. But life on Earth is so incredibly diverse, and just because humans aren't affected by this phenomenon doesn't mean other species aren't. To investigate this, a team of scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) worked with different sized male neriid flies to see if previous mates would influence another’s offspring by the same female. They bred several large and small males by feeding them either low or high-nutrient diets from when they were maggots. Once they’d grown to sexual maturity, both large and small males were mated with sexually immature females. Once the females were a little older and now sexually mature, they were mated again with either a large or small male, and were left to have their offspring. "We found that even though the second male sired the offspring, offspring size was determined by what the mother's previous mating partner ate as a maggot,” said lead researcher Angela Crean in a press release. Publishing their research in the journal Ecology Letters, the researchers suggest that this phenomenon is due to the molecules in the first mate's seminal fluid being absorbed by the female's immature eggs, and in turn influencing how the offspring of the next mate grows. "Our discovery complicates our entire view of how variation is transmitted across generations, but also opens up exciting new possibilities and avenues of research,” said Crean. "Just as we think we have things figured out, nature throws us a curve ball and shows us how much we still have to learn.” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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