Climate change can cause animals to switch sex

The 11 sex-reversed lizards were caught near the border of the Australian central bearded dragon’s range, close to the border of Queensland and New South Wales. This is a semi-arid region that tends to get hotter than the rest of the lizard’s range.

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When the sex-reversed females were mated with normal males, none of the offspring had sex chromosomes, and their sex was entirely determined by egg incubation temperature. Previously it was thought that chromosomes solely determined the sex of a lizard in the wild. Now it is known that the temperature of egg incubation can affect a wild-born individual’s sex as well.

When the offspring themselves later mated with others, their young were more likely to be sex reversed, presumably because of an inherited propensity.

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