Effect of temperature on gonadal sex differentiation in the sea turtleLepidochelys olivacea: An organ culture study

✍ Scribed by Merchant-Larios, H. ;Villalpando, I.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 596 KB
• Volume: 254
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-104X
• DOI: 10.1002/jez.1402540312

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Gonadal sex differentiation is controlled by the temperature of egg incubation in the sea turtle Lepidochelys olivacea. The physiological mechanism involved in this phenomenon is not understood. Here, we studied the differentiation of gonads isolated from embryos at different stages of development which previously had been incubated at either male‐ or female‐producing temperatures (28°C or 32°C respectively) and cultured at the alternative temperature. We found that morphologically bipotential gonads can undergo sexual differentiation in vitro. Under these conditions the sexual differentiation of isolated gonads was not influenced by the temperature during culture. However when whole embryos were further incubated, the gonads remained sensitive to incubation temperatures for at least three more stages of development. These results suggest that an extragonadal physiological mechanism may mediate the effect of temperature on gonadal sex determination.