Stephen Augustine wrote:
> Thelytoky (ability of females to lay diploid eggs resulting in clones of
>themselves)  . . .

The defn does not, or should not IMHO, feature that second aspect.  Here
are some reasons.

        The term 'clone' has become somewhat murky these past few years.
        Perhaps the most familiar, and most valid, meaning is the
mass-production of plant clones by ordinary cuttings.  But this has no real
counterpart amongst animal propagation techniques.  The removal of an
animal cell's nucleus by microsurgery, and substitution by a nucleus sucked
out of another cell, does not yield an ovum (or zygote, as the case may be)
with the same genome as the cell from which the donor nucleus was moved.
There are some important genes in the cytoplasm of the target egg (notably
in the mitochondria), and some cytoplasm from the donor cell is liable to
get thru.  (This last is the point of the recent '3 parents' human
experimentation in New Jersey.)
        Even among the plants, attempts at producing large numbers of
identical adults have not always succeeded.  When it became possible a
couple decades ago to grow some plants from single cells, the
mass-producers of pines gleefully bulked up from single cells taken from
meristems of their champion individual pine tree.  The result, I'm informed
(I don't think they've ever published this), was more monsters than anyone
had ever seen.  This can be interpreted to mean that the so-called
totipotence of adult cells actually does not correspond to potential to
grow into a standard adult organism.
        "Cloned" animals, so far, tend to be mainly flops (several hundred
duds for one 'Dolly' or similar "cloned" mammal); they tend to be oddly
large, which can require caesarian birth; and they tend to age rapidly and
die young.
        I mention all this as probably relevant to some of the
gene-tampering capers likely to be attempted by the gene-jockeys on bees;
but also because it should not be assumed the eggs resulting from thelytoky
are identical.  Detailed examination might show they are; but until then,
it would be prudent to assume some variation among them.

R

-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878   Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
                (9) 524 2949