MeetAcanthoxya linermis , a stick dirt ball native to New Zealand , and a particularly strange animate being at that as it only live in female form . Well , that ’s what scientists think until the first sleep with object lesson of a male was plant over 18,000 kilometers ( 11,180 mile ) away from their native land in the UK .
“ No males of anyAcanthoxyaspecies have ever been put down until now , ” Professor Mary Morgan - Richards , of Massey University in New Zealand , said ina financial statement .
“ It seems a mystifier why the first maleAcanthoxylashould turn up in a minuscule offshoot population on the other side of the worldly concern from their aboriginal land . It may be that males are to be find in New Zealand , but their rarity means they have yet to total to the notice of researchers in this field . ”
Acanthoxya linermis , sometimes cognize as the unarmed stick insect , is a in truth parthenogenetic species , meaning the females can reproduce themselves by laying eggs without the need for fertilization by a male person . As such , scientist have never document a male of this species before .
In October 2016 , insect partizan David Fenwick came across a reefer insect on his spouse ’s railcar in Cornwell , in the southwest of England . After noticing there was something unknown about this specimen , the dirt ball was finally passed on to Professor Steve Trewick , an evolutionary ecologist at Massey University in New Zealand who knows a thing or two about spliff insects .
research worker carried out desoxyribonucleic acid sequencing on transmitted fabric they obtained from the leg of the stick insect . To their surprise , their result showed that this was almost for certain the very first know example of a maleAcanthoxya .
The “ miss stickman ” is the centering of a new study publish in the journalAtropos . The researchers at Massey Unversity are hoping to use this someone to understand if sex can re - go forth in a species with asexual lineages , like the unarmed stick insect . And if so , how do they do this ?
“ The male is potential a mutant , and therefore unconvincing to beget progeny , ” explained Professor Morgan - Richards .
“ A mother has two X - chromosomes , so the yield of a Word can come about from a mistake during orchis organization , when an X - chromosome is lost . The chance of this happen inAcanthoxylais reduced because many are triploid , with three decade - chromosomes . ”
Lastly , we regret to inform you that the joystick worm died a few days after capture . He now lives in a jounce of ethanol at the Natural History Museum in London . buy the farm but not forgotten .
