Authors
Veronika Bókony, Emese Balogh, Nikolett Ujhegyi, Zsanett Mikó, Andrea Kásler, János Ujszegi, Attila Hettyey, Dávid Herczeg, Tibor Papp, Edina Nemesházi
Published in
Science advances. Volume 12. Issue 36. Pages eaeg3488. Sep 04, 2026. Epub Sep 02, 2026.
Abstract
Sex reversal, when the environment overrides genotypic sex determination, may hasten or delay climate-driven extinction in ectothermic animals, depending on sex-reversed individuals' reproductive ability and offspring viability. Empirically, next to nothing is known about these traits in natural populations. Here, we present a comprehensive dataset of wild frogs to compare sex-reversed and sex-concordant males for fertility, attractiveness to females, intrasexual competitiveness, and offspring survival in various environments. We demonstrate uncompromised potential of sex-reversed males to mate and produce viable offspring, which are all genotypic females but have increased sex-reversal propensity. However, sex-reversed males realize reduced paternity in natural populations, possibly due to cryptic female choice. Furthermore, offspring of sex-reversed sires exhibit increased vulnerability to viral infection after heat stress. Our theoretical model predicts that these handicaps of sex-reversed males compromise their ability to compensate by producing female offspring for climate-driven male bias in phenotypic sex ratios, which reduces population viability. Therefore, sex reversal exacerbates the biodiversity consequences of environmental change.
PMID:
42685202
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 18 Oct 2026.
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