Meeting Abstract
Though many basic developmental processes are highly conserved throughout vertebrates, multiple primary sex-determination pathways have independently evolved. During vertebrate sex determination, a bipotential gonad receives signals that initiate either male- or female-specific development. In the red-eared slider turtle Trachemys scripta, egg incubation temperature serves as a sex-determining switch. Critical germ cell dynamics in the turtle gonad are not well understood, especially in terms of how these events are related to or regulated by temperature. Work in other vertebrates suggests that germ cells play a key role in somatic development of the gonad and sex specific proliferation events that influence sex determination have been previously observed. We show that germ cell migration, proliferation, and other dynamic changes occur in the turtle gonad in a temperature and sex specific way.
