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Genetic contribution to sex determination in turtles with environmental sex determination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2009

Marc Girondot ,
Patrick Zaborski ,
Jean Servan  and
Claude Pieau
Marc Girondot*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Biochimie du Développement, Institut Jacques Monod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Universite Paris 7, 2 place Jussieu, 75251 Paris CEDEX 05, France
Patrick Zaborski
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Biochimie du Développement, Institut Jacques Monod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Universite Paris 7, 2 place Jussieu, 75251 Paris CEDEX 05, France Laboratoire d'Évolution des Systémes Naturels et Modifiés, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 36, rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, 75005 Paris, France
Jean Servan
Affiliation:
Centre de Biologie Cellulaire, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 67 rue Maurice Günsbourg, 94205 Ivry-sur-Seine CEDEX, France
Claude Pieau
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Biochimie du Développement, Institut Jacques Monod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Universite Paris 7, 2 place Jussieu, 75251 Paris CEDEX 05, France
*
* Corresponding author.
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In many reptiles, sex determination is temperature-sensitive. This phenomenon has been shown to take place in the laboratory as well as in nature, but its effect on natural populations remains questionable. In the turtle Emys orbicularis, the effects of temperature override a weak mechanism of genetic sex determination which is revealed in incubation at pivotal temperature. At this temperature, the sexual phenotype is concordant with the expression of the serologically defined H-Y antigen (H-Ys) in non-gonadal tissues; males are H-Ys negative (H-Y−) whereas females are H-Ys positive (H-Y+). To estimate the importance of sexual inversion (sexual phenotype and H-Ys expression discordant) in populations of Brenne (France), the frequencies of male and female sexual phenotypes among H-Ys phenotypes were determined. The frequencies of sex reversed individuals are low, only 6 % of phenotypic females being H-Y− and 11 % of phenotypic males being H-Y+. According to these data, two theoretical models have been constructed to estimate the contribution to sex determination of individuals in relation to their genotype. The first model excludes any influence of incubation temperature and sexual phenotype on the fitness of individuals. The second one considers that these parameters influence fitness because this model has been previously shown to favour environmental sex determination. In both models, it appears that sex determination can be viewed as genotypic and monogenic with some individuals sexually inverted by theaction of temperature. One category of homozygous animals differentiates mainly into one sex, and the heterozygous animals differentiate mainly into the other sex. The second category of homozygotes has a low frequency in the populations and can differentiate as male or female without high constraint. Then it is estimated that in Brenne approximately 83% of the eggs are incubated in conditions allowing the genetic component to influence sex determination.

Type
Research Article
Information
Genetics Research , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , April 1994 , pp. 117 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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