2018-12-13 7:18:33 ¶ ● ⬈

dingodad:

> a lot of back and forth has been had over the years about the science behind troll sex and reproduction. the use of the mother grub as a third party to intercourse and the mechanics of the slurry have been particular points of contention.

> a piece printed in New Scientist weekly earlier this week (8th December 2018 No3207) I think may finally put the nail in the coffin of a few long-running talking points.

> ## Some bees can have four parents

> > In bees, unfertilised eggs develop into males, or drones, who seek out queens to mate with. Fertilised eggs usually become female workers.

> > However, queens mate with at least 10 males to produce new colony members, and more than one sperm enters each egg. In a few rare instances, a bee can end up with some tissue derived from the fertilised egg, which is female, and some from extra sperm, which is male. The resulting animals are known as gynandromorphs, and have both male and female tissue throughout the body.

> > Sarah Aamidor and colleagues at the University of Sydney, Australia studied 11 gynandromorph honeybees from a single colony to learn more about how these individuals develop. Five had normal worker ovaries, and three had “queen-like” ovaries. One had normal male reproductive organs, and two had partial male organs.

> > Genetic tests revealed the unusual family history of 10 of these bees. Nine had two or three fathers and one mother. One had no mother and two fathers, resulting from the fusion of two sperm (Biology Letters, doi.org/cxjh).

> to make a long story short:

> - instances of two organisms (in this situation: two trolls) having a biological child within the womb of a third organism (the queen bee, or a mother grub in this case) are not only entirely possible, but actually happen
> - in the presence of an egg (such as one from the mother grub herself) the number of parents is not limited to two: a troll having a descendant with the genetic material of both their kismesis and their matesprit is also entirely within the realms of biological probability