Turtles of the genera Geoemyda and Pangshura (Testudines: Geoemydidae) lack differentiated sex chromosomes: the end of a 40-year error cascade for Pangshura

For a long time, turtles of the family Geoemydidae have been considered exceptional because representatives of this family were thought to possess a wide variety of sex determination systems. In the present study, we cytogenetically studied and and re-examined the putative presence of sex chromosome...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PeerJ (San Francisco, CA) CA), 2019-02, Vol.7, p.e6241-e6241, Article e6241
Main Authors: Mazzoleni, Sofia, Augstenová, Barbora, Clemente, Lorenzo, Auer, Markus, Fritz, Uwe, Praschag, Peter, Protiva, Tomáš, Velenský, Petr, Kratochvíl, Lukáš, Rovatsos, Michail
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Apalone spinifera
Chromosomes
Comparative genome hybridization
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Evolution
Evolutionary Studies
FISH
Genomes
Genomics
Geoclemys hamiltonii
Geoemyda japonica
Geoemyda spengleri
Geoemydidae
Heterochromatin
Hybridization
Karyotypes
Microsatellite
Morphology
Museums
Pelodiscus sinensis
Phylogenetics
Reptiles
Reptiles & amphibians
Sex chromosomes
Sex determination
Sex determination (Diagnosis)
Snakes
Taxonomy
Telomeres
Testudines
Turtles
Zoology
Zoos
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Summary:For a long time, turtles of the family Geoemydidae have been considered exceptional because representatives of this family were thought to possess a wide variety of sex determination systems. In the present study, we cytogenetically studied and and re-examined the putative presence of sex chromosomes in . Karyotypes were examined by assessing the occurrence of constitutive heterochromatin, by comparative genome hybridization and hybridization with repetitive motifs, which are often accumulated on differentiated sex chromosomes in reptiles. We found similar karyotypes, similar distributions of constitutive heterochromatin and a similar topology of tested repetitive motifs for all three species. We did not detect differentiated sex chromosomes in any of the species. For , a ZZ/ZW sex determination system, with differentiated sex chromosomes, was described more than 40 years ago, but this finding has never been re-examined and was cited in all reviews of sex determination in reptiles. Here, we show that the identification of sex chromosomes in the original report was based on the erroneous pairing of chromosomes in the karyogram, causing over decades an error cascade regarding the inferences derived from the putative existence of female heterogamety in geoemydid turtles.
ISSN:2167-8359
2167-8359
DOI:10.7717/peerj.6241