Broo Reproduction

From: samclau_at_E0eWqbl604xDYQPFZqLRUDmb1ovFIkPRNmnmlvL4OBkbrs1Y810388c-SH1L_uUrwsTF
Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 09:53:15 -0300


Like a lot of animals, I betcha that broo sex ratios are produced in response to circumstance. They'd likely be heavily skewed towards females as Donald (I think) suggested.

Seeing as broo are essentially parasitoids (parasitoids wasps would have been the inspiration for Alien), here are just a few biological thoughts which might be usable for broo...

Broo rape needn't necessarily be rape at all; it could be that all those broo are female and their dangly bits are ovipositors, but no-one has noticed.

There is a species of mite (actually a group of species originally known as Brevipalpus phoenicis) whose individuals, although functionally female, are all genetically male. The way to get functional males is to use antibiotics to cure them of the endosymbiotic bacterium which feminizes the males. Potentially, broo are all females, somewhere deep down, but all that Thed malarky makes them functionally males, out to get revenge of sorts. I think this kinda rings true. "Cure" a broo an maybe you get a female of sorts. Perhaps those dangly bits on a male broo are like female hyaena genitalia (I'm not going to go into depth, the words are naughty). [NB Probably at least half of the arthropods around have sex-ratio distorting symbionts]

Sex determination in many insects and mites is not your XY business but an XX setup where a single X makes for a male. If broo impregnate a victim, they could quite possibly be doing so in an asexual way with just one X going on, so the baby broo is only different from papa in how the host affects it. This can lead to some ramifications which don't have to make too much sense - a double impregnation leads to that rarest of things, a female broo.

Female broo when they do occur needn't be like male broo at all. They could be something obscene like a scaled-up termite queen.

A lot of parasitoids are ectoparasitoids, hanging off the side of their host. Some broo could do this.

Parasites affect host behaviour an awful lot, often to their own advantage (although hard to prove experimentally). Rather than just being sick and tragic, a broo host could do all sorts of things to advantage the homunculus within.

Parasitoids when they emerge, will often pick up chemical cues from their host which they will use to locate similar hosts in future.

When broo attack plants they become like plant galls.

Hyperparasitoids parasitize other parasitoids. Maybe some broo are specialized in goingfor impregnated victims.

Just some thoughts.

Sam.



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