New Scientist
Image: Stephen Childs
Male pipefish pregnancy may suit the females, but it’s a real boon for their offspring.
In human fetuses, antibodies from the mother’s egg and others that pass across the placenta help build its developing immune system. Sperm are too small to carry antibodies, so males aren’t thought to contribute.
Not so in pipefish, where the male carries the pregnancy. To see if the immune priming might come from both the mother’s egg and via the father’s placenta-like structure, Olivia Roth at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany and colleagues exposed lab-grown male and female broad-nosed pipefish to dead bacteria. Read more on newscientist.com…
