Experimentelle Veränderung der Fortpflanzungstätigkeit bei Geburtshelferkröte (Alytes obstetricans) und Laubfrosch (Hyla arborea)

Kammerer, Paul

doi:10.1007/bf02162325

Cited by 26 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Kammerer, who was a very talented herpetologist, kept and bred midwife toads in terrariums and found that he could, by manipulating the terrarium conditions, induce somatic and behavioral changes some of which were inheritable. The original papers by Kammerer describing the midwife toad experiments are found in several articles written in old‐fashioned German (Kammerer, , , , , , ). For the larger English‐speaking readership, only partial descriptions of Kammerer's experiments have been available, mostly through second‐hand accounts.…”

Section: Preepigenetic Accounts On the Midwife Toad Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Austrian Zoologist Paul Kammerer was probably the most influential researcher of the early 20th century to defend the inheritance of acquired traits. In this context, he conducted several long‐term experimental studies, the better known of which concerned the common midwife toad, Alytes obstetricans (Kammerer, , , , , , ). These experiments resulted in environmentally induced traits such as the presence of pigmented nuptial pads on the forelimbs of males, a trait normally absent in this species.…”

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confidence: 99%

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An Epigenetic Perspective on the Midwife Toad Experiments of Paul Kammerer (1880–1926)

2016

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Paul Kammerer was the most outstanding neo-Lamarckian experimentalist of the early 20th century. He reported spectacular results in the midwife toad, including crosses of environmentally modified toads with normal toads, where acquired traits were inherited in Mendelian fashion. Accusations of fraud generated a great scandal, ending with Kammerer's suicide. Controversy reignited in the 1970s, when journalist Arthur Koestler argued against these accusations. Since then, others have argued that Kammerer's results, even if real, were not groundbreaking and could be explained by somatic plasticity, inadvertent selection, or conventional genetics. More recently, epigenetics has uncovered mechanisms by which inheritance can respond directly to environmental change, inviting a reanalysis of Kammerer's descriptions. Previous arguments for mere somatic plasticity have ignored the description of experiments showing heritable germ line modification. Alleged inadvertent selection associated with egg mortality can be discarded, since mortality decreased in a single generation, upon repeated exposures. The challenging implications did not escape the attention of Kammerer's noted contemporary, William Bateson, but he reacted with disbelief, thus encouraging fraud accusations. Nowadays, formerly puzzling phenomena can be explained by epigenetic mechanisms. Importantly, Kammerer described parent-of-origin effects, an effect of parental sex on dominance. Epigenetic mechanisms underlie these effects in genomic imprinting and experiments of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. In the early 20th century, researchers had no reason to link them with the inheritance of acquired traits. Thus, the parent-of-origin effects in Kammerer's experiments specifically suggest authenticity. Ultimate proof should come from renewed experimentation. To encourage further research, we present a model of possible epigenetic mechanisms.

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Section: Preepigenetic Accounts On the Midwife Toad Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

An Epigenetic Perspective on the Midwife Toad Experiments of Paul Kammerer (1880–1926)

2016

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“…It must, however, be remembered that our crosses were made between distinct species. G oldschmidt (32, p. 324) observes that, whereas in crosses between the varieties of a species the reciprocals are almost always alike, in species hybrids (" Artbastarde' ) they are often different from one another, as for instance the well-known case of hybrids between the horse and ass.# Parallel cases possibly similar to the above are shown by :- (44) found a different dominance in the two reciprocals of a cross, which he called " sexual prepotency." When a female midwife toad, which inherited artificially changed breeding instincts, was crossed with a normal male, the Fx offspring were normal.…”

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confidence: 58%

“…fig. 127)-A number of urchins of this cross (35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45) survived and attained considerable size by the end of the first year. At the time they were about five or six months old their pigmentation was quite different from that shown at present.…”

Section: E Esculentus $ X Eacutus $ ( C F Plate Figs 123-126)-mentioning

confidence: 99%

VIII. On the experimental hybridization of echinoids

1914

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B

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The present work was originally undertaken some four years ago, with the object of finding out how readily some of our common sea-urchins could be crossed, and their larvæ reared to a stage when they assumed adult characters. The forms selected for this purpose were Echinus acutus, E. esculentus , and E. miliaris . One of our number (de Morgan) had already reared the larvæ of E. esculentus and E. miliaris , as well as the crosses E. acutus ♀ X E. esculentus ♂ and E. miliaris ♀ X E. esculentus ♂ through metamorphosis. Our early experiments showed that if the right conditions were observed, all the possible crosses between these forms could be reared through metamorphosis. This led to the attempt to discover definite characters in the larval development, more specific and fixed than those hitherto employed as a basis of comparison between normal and hybrid plutei. Moreover, of the three species selected for our experiments, two, E. esculentus and E. acutus , are closely related; while the third, E. miliaris , is but distantly allied to the other two, being usually classed in the separate genus of Psammechinus . Thus, if the hybrids between E. miliaris and E. esculentus , and E. miliaris and E. acutus should prove sterile, on account of the specific differences separating these species, those at least between E. esculentus and E. acutus would, we hoped, yield fertile hybrids, which could be investigated in a second generation. In the numerous papers which have appeared on Echinoderm hybridization, hitherto only the characters of the early pluteus, up to the assumption of the eight-armed condition, have been investigated. In the past it has been held that the early larval characters are sufficiently definite to give a clear answer to all questions of inheritance. The larval skeleton has been adopted as a main basis of comparison between normal and hybrid larvæ; unfortunately, the skeleton, like many of the early larval features, is subject to irregular variation. Under unfavourable circumstances the skeleton frequently tends to develop extra rods and spinous processes, which give it a spurious resemblance to that of other species. Therefore skeletal characters cannot always be safely attributed to hereditary influence. In our experiments we soon came to the conclusion that if any definite advance were to be made in this subject, it would be best to abandon the skeleton, and all the early features of the pluteus, as an index of parental influence, and to find more definite characters in the later larval life, and that we should have rigorously to adhere in our work to two general principles.

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“…Four publications report on Kammerer's experimental work with Alytes (Kammerer 1906(Kammerer , 1909(Kammerer , 1911(Kammerer and 1919. The data that inspired Vargas (2009) and Vargas et al (2016) to suggest an epigenetic explanation for the experiments are described in the 1909 and 1911 publications, that we here summarize.…”

Section: Kammerer's Alytes Experiments: Design and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The case of the midwife toad revisited

Alphen

Arntzen

2017

CTOZ

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In a recent paper it was suggested that results published by Kammerer (1911) on the midwife toad could be explained by epigenetics (Vargas et al., 2016). We show that data thought to be fitting are based on untested assumptions about the underlying genetic mechanisms. We cite recent studies on the genetics of life history traits, in particular egg-size and number, to show that these assumptions are not realistic. We review aspects of Kammerer’s experimental results on the midwife toad for which there are no plausible mechanisms, i.e. toads switching from land-breeding to water-breeding in response to an increase in temperature, eggs becoming resistant to moulds within a few generations, the gradual development of nuptial pads, heterochronous changes in the development of water-born larvae, and conclude that Kammerer cannot have obtained the results he claims. We argue that natural selection would not have favoured a change in reproductive mode and the loss of parental care and that an epigenetic master switch, affecting many different traits simultaneously, would have either eroded during more than 15 million years of land-breeding and/or would have disappeared by natural selection against it. Finally, we show that Kammerer's data are remarkably close to the invoked Mendelian ratio and too good to be genuine. We conclude that Kammerer’s data are fictitious and that Vargas et al. (2016) have used non-existing data in search of support for a role of epigenetics in neo-Lamarckian evolution.

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Experimentelle Veränderung der Fortpflanzungstätigkeit bei Geburtshelferkröte (Alytes obstetricans) und Laubfrosch (Hyla arborea)

Cited by 26 publications

References 13 publications

An Epigenetic Perspective on the Midwife Toad Experiments of Paul Kammerer (1880–1926)

An Epigenetic Perspective on the Midwife Toad Experiments of Paul Kammerer (1880–1926)

VIII. On the experimental hybridization of echinoids

The case of the midwife toad revisited

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