‘Sex reversal’ is surprisingly common in birds, new study suggests. Really!

When AAAS toys with LGBTQ ideology! Did AAAS try to imply or suggest that transgender is normal in nature! Oh look, birds do it too!

First of all, Australia is home to a number of odd animals (e.g. kangaroo). This article is only about 5 species of birds. Only 3-6% of individual birds are affected by "sex reversal". Perhaps, there are yet to be discovered/identified special factors that cause this sex reversal in these five species of birds in Queensland, Australia.

"... But that’s not the case for all bird species. When males and females look pretty much the same, scientists must try harder—often using DNA testing—to separate the sexes. According to a new study of wild Australian birds, these methods may be leading to misidentification in cases where an individual’s gonads and outward appearance don’t align with the genetic sex determined by its chromosomes. As scientists report today in Biology Letters, this phenomenon—known as sex reversal—may be more common than anyone expected. ...

The team was surprised to find sex-reversed individuals in all five species, at rates of 3% to 6%. Nearly all these discordant birds were genetically female but had male reproductive organs. However, the researchers also found a few genetic males with ovaries—including a genetically male kookaburra with a distended oviduct, indicating it had recently laid an egg. ..."

From the abstract:

"The ability to unequivocally identify the sex and reproductive status of individuals is crucial across many fields of study. Recent evidence indicates that avian sex determination is more flexible than once believed, with sex-reversed individuals identified in domestic bird populations—that is, individuals exhibiting gonadal and morphological traits of one sex while possessing the chromosomal make-up of the opposite sex. The presence of these individuals can challenge the reliability of traditional sexing methods that rely solely on external morphology, internal anatomy or genetic markers. These methods, when used in isolation, fail to identify sex-reversed or intersex individuals, potentially overlooking their impact on population dynamics.

In this pioneering study, we investigated the prevalence of sex-reversed individuals in five common free-living avian species in Queensland, Australia. By comparing internal and external morphological characteristics with polymerase chain reaction results from sex-linked molecular markers, we identified sex-reversed individuals in all five species, with rates ranging from 3 to 6%.

Our findings suggest that sex reversal is a common [???] and potentially widespread phenomenon in avian species."

‘Sex reversal’ is surprisingly common in birds, new study suggests | Science | AAAS "Survey of five Australian avians finds numerous discordant individuals, including a genetically male bird that had laid an egg"

 

Prevalence and implications of sex reversal in free-living birds (no public access)