Adélie penguin: Homosexual couples -- Mangrove killifish: Reproducing with itself -- Duck-billed dinosaur: Bias in names -- New Mexico whiptail lizard: Parthenogenesis -- Morpho butterfly: Divided down the middle -- Western lowland gorilla: Queer behavior in apes -- Domestic sheep: Can animals be gay? -- Saharan cypress: Androgenesis -- Bicolor parrotfish: Sex-fluid fishes -- Swans: Male couples as parents -- Green sea turtle: Temperature-dependent sex determination -- Giraffe: Homosexuality in the mainstream -- Common ash: Sexual spectrum -- Common cockchafer: Historical homosexuality -- European yew: Sex change -- European eel: Environment-dependent sex determination -- White-throated sparrow: Beyond the binary -- Spotted hyena: Female-led societies -- Western gull: Lesbian mothers -- Common bottlenose dolphin: Explaining the gay away -- Common pill woodlouse: Bacteria-dependent sex determination -- Bluegill sunfish: Do animals have gender? -- Common pheasant: Out-sized influence -- Splitgill mushroom: Thousands of sexes -- Chinese shell ginger: Temporal sex -- Cane toad: Intersex animals -- Moss mites: Ancient asexuals -- Dungowan bush tomato: Changeable sex -- Barklice: Sex-reversed genitals.
Summary
From a pair of male swans raising young to splitgill mushrooms with over 23,000 mating types, sex in the natural world is wonderfully diverse. Josh L. Davis considers how, for many different organisms--animals, plants, and fungi included--sexual reproduction and sex determination rely on a surprisingly complex interaction among genes, hormones, environment, and chance. As Davis introduces us to fascinating biological concepts like parthenogenesis (virgin birth), monoecious plants (individuals with separate male and female flowers), and sex-reversed genitals, we see turtle hatchlings whose sex is determined by egg temperature; butterflies that embody male and female biological tissue in the same organism; and a tomato that can reproduce three different ways at the same time. Davis also reveals animal and plant behaviors in nature that researchers have historically covered up or explained away, like queer sex among Adélie penguins or bottlenose dolphins, and presents animal behaviors that challenge us to rethink our assumptions and prejudices. Featuring fabulous sex-fluid fishes and ant, wasp, and bee queens who can choose both how they want to have sex and the sex of their offspring, A Little Queer Natural History offers a larger lesson: that the diversity we see in our own species needs no justification and represents just a fraction of what exists in the natural world.
