The C. chenggongensis thread again (I)

[benjamin]

If the Cyanarus are already breeding they probably are not going to grow that much. That's a very remarkable size difference there. The "chengongensis" also looks a bit more heavily built.

 

[joseph]

Ben Tajer: That phenomenom has been documented with fish, never heard about caudates. The Amazon molly Poecillia "formosa" Needs sperm of one of the 2 host species to activate eggs, but they contribute no genetic material. This "species" is all female, hence the name Amazon.

 

[paul]

My summary:
Comparing the pictures with my literature information and with the newts I saw:
The newts of Tim’s posting "C. cyanurus eggs" have a tail color like C. cyanurus cyanurus, but a black part at cloaca like it is described from C.c. yunnanensis.
The group which should be chenggongensis looks like the description of C. cyanurus cyanurus. If we have only one individual it could be an unusual colored one ("most of them"), but in a group the typical chenggongensis color should turn up.
But we can give statements what we want – if we do not know the locality of this newts we can speculate everything.

Paul

 

[benjamin]

I have a book, <u>Amphibians The World of Frogs, Toads and Newts</u> edited Robert Hofrichter (excelent book with an index of every amphibian species known by 2001, including chengongensis), says that this process that produces triploid individuals, also known as gygogenesis happens in mole salamanders. A similar process exibited by edible frogs is Hybridogenesis which produces diploid individuals of either sex. Both gygogenesis and hybridogenesis, are examples of parthenogenesis, were sperm is merely an activator of cell division, or doesn't participate at all.

 

[nate]

Ok, closing this thread due to length again and reopening it elsewhere. This might be the longest thread ever on caudata.org, when you put the other closed threads together, eh? I can't think of any longer ones.

(Message edited by nate on October 10, 2004)