Two Fathers to One Clutch

We all know that female chameleons can produce more than one clutch of eggs from a single mating. If this happens all the time, why wouldn't it be possible for a female to mate with 2 males and produce a clutch with 2 different fathers?

Some of the eggs could be fertilized by an old mate and the rest freshly fertilized by a new mate. I have had clutches that seem to turn out this way, showing 2 different "styles" of males. One style will look just like the females first CH babies that came in fertilized by a wild male and the others will look much more like the captive dad that last mated with the female.

That now said it just dawned on me that maybe some males from a clutch will get their looks from the mom and others from the dad. That could explain the 2 different "styles" and also explain why not all male offspring will look like their father / sire -- they look like a boy version of their mom!

Anyway, do you know the answer to this question?

I think it could be both. Female birds have been proven to breed with multiple males. It only increases genetic diversity of their offspring. Of course different phenotypes can also be a result from maternal genes that are expressed in the offspring (each baby receives two sets of chromosomes, one from the father, one from the mother).
I do think chameleons are kind of similar to birds in this way (at least some species). Take T. deremensis for example, my female has mated with the male 8 times over a period of almost 2 months. In the wild, she could have encountered a lot of males in that amount of time (though I have no idea how a natural deremensis population would look like).

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30864533/ns/today-parenting_and_family/t/mother-gives-birth-twins-different-dads/#.TyqMQE9xG0A



Of course it can happen for chameleons.

Ok, lets take what you guys said as the truth. The next question is: What do we do different to maintain captive bloodlines with this possibility?

Just want to add that ball python breeders have done it. Bred 2 males to 1 female and got all sorts of different babies.

Seeco said:

Ok, lets take what you guys said as the truth. The next question is: What do we do different to maintain captive bloodlines with this possibility?

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I'd say only form pairs with 2 animals. If you would have 4 unrelated bloodlines (2 male, 2 female) and form 2 pairs, you can form unrelated F1 pairs with their young. If you mate a female with 2 males, further unrelated breeding would be more difficult. You could only (safely) breed the young with the remaining female, unless you'd have a way to figure out which baby carries which male's genes. In that case, some babies can later on breed with male 1, other babies can breed with male 2. It would be inefficient to use that method though, since the age difference is quite big between the animals you can mate for a second breeding attempt.

Txherp said:

Just want to add that ball python breeders have done it. Bred 2 males to 1 female and got all sorts of different babies.

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Doesn't have to be due to different fathers (think about Mendel's pea plant crossings, some genes skip a generation and are only expressed in homozygotes), but could be. I don't know the extent of variance in those ball python babies though. Maybe you'd have to do DNA tests to determine which babies inherited which male's chromosomes.

I am looking for proof to my post. I know it happens in the BP world but I am trying to find it in writing.
http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?107650-Can-multiple-males-sire-one-clutch/page2
http://www.rcreptiles.com/forum/about6691.html
http://reptileradio.net/reptileradio/showthread.php?t=20999

Multiple fathers is possible, I covered this recently in a genetics class but in the context of birds. Our professor specializes in birds so it makes sense that she focuses more on them, but it makes since that this is possible in any egg-laying animal. If you have 20 eggs to fertilize in the ovaries and throw in two+ sources of sperm, there is nothing stopping them from reaching different eggs. The percentage of which eggs are fathered by each male is completely random but it could and does happen.

It happens in cats and dogs as well, and humans in a few rare occasions.

So than taking this into consideration we can conclude that the only thing you can be sure of (at least in WC chameleons) is the mom of a clutch.

I have this tendency to keep the oddball of each clutch so now I wonder what I really have on my hands...

Probably, yes. But in wildcaught chameleons, it doesn't matter who the father is, since the chance that the young are related to a chameleon they are mated with (later on in their lives) in captivity is generally extremely low.

Oh certainly, that was actually one way I got more DNA in my collection. What I mean to say is that if you get a WC female and soon after breed it to a male it is possible that the sire of the clutch (or at least part of the clutch) could actually be some cham back in Africa.

Bump. Anyone else?

Seeco said:

Oh certainly, that was actually one way I got more DNA in my collection. What I mean to say is that if you get a WC female and soon after breed it to a male it is possible that the sire of the clutch (or at least part of the clutch) could actually be some cham back in Africa.

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Could be, I don't know if the female would use only the sperm from the captive male she mated with, or that she also fertilizes her eggs with retained sperm from a male back in the wild. Interesting question...

Ferdy Timmerman said:

Could be, I don't know if the female would use only the sperm from the captive male she mated with, or that she also fertilizes her eggs with retained sperm from a male back in the wild. Interesting question...

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Ya I am working out a "family tree" for my project and starting to wonder...

I am wondering the same thing in regards to "retained" sperm. So many female reptiles can multiple clutch from a single mating. If she is later mated to a specific, single male, then it seems possible that some of her offspring are from retained and some from new DNA. I have read about how sperm competes and how some organisms have adaptations to block the sperm of competing males. Also, there is evidence in studies that female physiology is also playing at these games (does she save some ova for that strapping male that comes along and unseats the smaller male she was just copulating with? - that would be in her offspring's best interest). Seems like it would be an interesting study for a graduate research student that has access to DNA testing equipment.

Monzon said:

Seems like it would be an interesting study for a graduate research student that has access to DNA testing equipment.

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Someone sign me up!

Multiple paternity is extremely common in lizards with some species being extremely promiscuous in their mating habits. I would fully expect taxa with the capability to store sperm to possibly drop clutches with genetic input from multiple males. It would definitely be interesting to see what paternity patterns look like in wild clutches.

Chris

That should be on your list Chris! And while you're at it you could delve a bit deeper into UV reflectance communication. Good stuff!