Twin embryos of A. apletophallus dissected from a single egg that failed to hatch.
During my research project on A. apletophallus I dissected many eggs that failed to hatch but I was very surprised to discover two embryos in this egg. The female had mated in the wild and laid many normal single embryo eggs before and after this one. Twin embryos have been observed in other lizards (e.g Agama agama (Herptelogica 1967,23:57), leopard geckos and bearded dragons) but I did not find any previous report in anoles. Thought it my interest the AA readers. Anyone else seen this?
Postdoctoral Researcher working on the evolution of a dewlap colour-pattern polymorphism in a Panamanian anole
Latest posts by JessicaStapley (see all)
- From Across the Pond: Anole Presentations at ESEB 2015 - August 19, 2015
- Panamanian Anole Population in Decline - February 15, 2015
- Twin embryos - April 13, 2013
Anthony Geneva
Wow, that’s wild. We haven’t seen anything like that in our distichus colony.
Thomas Sanger
Were these originally conjoined? The posterior of the embryo looks badly damaged so I can’t tell. Its also worth noting that the embryo on the left in the above photo is grossly deformed: the brain is not bulging out of the head and the face has not grown out.
Over the last 10 years I have preserved 4-6 embryos with some sort of axis duplication. I wrote about one of these a while back. I have also never found a viable pair of late-stage twin embryos or multiple hatchlings in a dish that originally contained only one egg. Has anyone ever observe viable dizygotic twins in lizards?
Thomas Sanger
Clearly screwed up the HTML on that one. Sorry. The title of the post in question is: Not All Embryos are Created Equal
Jessica Stapley
Sorry for the state of the embryos. I was reluctant to make the post because this was the only picture I had. The dissection (or butchering) was crude and I am not sure if they were conjoined – I don’t remember having to separate them. One embryo does look deformed. Would be interesting to know if twin embryos are ever viable.