Male Frogs Turned Into Females By Pesticide Atrazine

[Kadie]

Male Frogs Turned Into Females By Pesticide Atrazine

Article Date: 03 Mar 2010 - 0:00 PST

Atrazine, one of the world's most widely used pesticides, wreaks havoc with the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.

The 75 percent that are chemically castrated are essentially "dead" because of their inability to reproduce in the wild, reports UC Berkeley's Tyrone B. Hayes, professor of integrative biology.

"These male frogs are missing testosterone and all the things that testosterone controls, including sperm. So their fertility is as low as 10 percent in some cases, and that is only if we isolate those animals and pair them with females," he said. "In an environment where they are competing with unexposed animals, they have zero chance of reproducing."

The 10 percent or more that turn from males into females - something not known to occur under natural conditions in amphibians - can successfully mate with male frogs but, because they are genetically male, all their offspring are male.

more...
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/180882.php




A leopard frog, Rana pipiens, from the Midwest where native frogs are suffering the effects of atrazine, is seen in a handout photo. Atrazine, one of the most commonly used and controversial weedkillers, can turn male frogs into females, researchers reported on Monday.
REUTERS/UC Berkeley/Tyrone Hayes

[Crunchy Frog]

1. I wonder if that stuff has any effects on humans.

[MineralMan]

3. No good effects, I can promise you.

[Bozita]

5. Let's spray it on, in, and around the C Street house and find out

[DCKit]

12. It's already in the DC water supply. If you don't drink the water, you'll absorb it in the shower.

Last summer there was a report that we have trans-sex fish in the Potomac.

Why is this news just hitting now? We've been talking about this in Energy and Environment for months already.

[SpiralHawk]

8. Lots of studies show the feminization of male mammals is happening

We live in a corporate chemical soup, and it is completely disrupting the systems of all.

Agrichemicals - Atrazine among them -- are no doubt a part of all this gender bending whatever...

[brooklynite]

2. I don't buy it; I think its a lifestyle choice...

[MineralMan]

4. I don't ask. They don't tell. I'm clueless.

[Klukie]

6. I wonder what it is doing to the females?

[Trillo]

7. Time to outlaw Atrazine. nt

[L. Coyote]

9. all organo-phoshates

my neighbors both died of cancer right after they killed the termites under their house. Noone checked for slab cracks!!!

[surrealAmerican]

10. They turn into females that can actually reproduce?

I wouldn't have thought it possible.

[ConcernedCanuk]

11. Oh my - wait till women get the idea to carry a weed-sprayer

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along with their pepper spray

THAT'll teach them macho attackers a thing or two - -

by the time the guy gets to court . . .

:silly:

sumthing to ponder

:dunce: