Divers and offspring

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Also, recalling Human Biology 101 from undergrad, you are statistically more likely to have a female child anyway. :)

AFAIK you either pass on an X or Y chromosome, so that is 50% in my book.

I have one daughter, and my wife does not dive, I have other diving friends who have had all daughters, and others who have all sons, plus the usual mix of each with others.

There are factors I believe that can influence which sperm carrying X or Y achieving the goal (egg) such as pH and it could be possible that pressure or nitrogen saturation plays a part.

Something for a diving Gynecologist to study and write a paper on, going to take a long time though, a lot of variables to consider.
 
AFAIK you either pass on an X or Y chromosome, so that is 50% in my book.

I have one daughter, and my wife does not dive, I have other diving friends who have had all daughters, and others who have all sons, plus the usual mix of each with others.

There are factors I believe that can influence which sperm carrying X or Y achieving the goal (egg) such as pH and it could be possible that pressure or nitrogen saturation plays a part.

Something for a diving Gynecologist to study and write a paper on, going to take a long time though, a lot of variables to consider.

I just remember something like 49.9% male versus 50.1% female (or something like that). As an immature undergrad it stuck in my mind because the professor, who was female herself, said that female is the "default" gender and one extra step happens for a male - which explains the very slight discrepancy. I could very well have misunderstood some piece of information along the way though - bio is NOT my field! :no:
 
Flashing back to biology here.

The Y gamete dies, or is damaged, at a lower temperature than the X gamete.

So our professor contended that men can influence the sex of their children by the the underwear that they wear, by taking hot baths, so on so forth. I do recall that he actually provided us with studies showing that this was indeed scientifically valid.

That was 15-20 years ago.
 
I have 1 boy and 1 girl. Had them both before I started diving (well I didn't have them but you know what I mean):D
 
Statistically 49.9 and 50.1 % is probably not significant, but I am not a statistician so perhaps somebody more wise in numbers can comment.

The temperature differences are correct though, as is pH of the environment that the sperm swim through to reach the target.
 
I dive, the wife does not. I have a daughter from a previous marriage, she has a son from a previous marriage. My X was not a diver either. Oh wait, I didn't learn to dive until my daughter was 18. nevermind.:Dhttp://www.hulu.com/watch/2364/saturday-night-live-weekend-update-emily-litella-on-violins-on-tv
 
Actually, males are more common than females. The reason is the payload of the missle. The gender determining chromosome is the "Y" chromosome. A male has one "Y" and one "X" (which is much larger and heavier). Females have two "X" chromosomes. A sperm carries only 1/2 of the genome, the egg has the other half of the contribution. The egg always has an "X" chromosome. So if the sperm has a "Y" chromosome, and it fertilizes the egg, the offspring will be male.

A sperm's chance of fertilizing the egg is greatly increased by increased speed. Since sperm containing "Y" chromosomes are a bit faster than sperm carrying "X" chromosomes, more eggs are fertilized with "Y" chromosomes. OK, so why do males tend to be outnumbered by females?

Well, the thing is that the "X" chromosome has a bunch of genes on it. If the mother's "X" chromosome has a defective gene, the result could be fatal if the offspring is male (they only have one copy so it better be a good one - remember there are 23 pairs of chromosomes of which X and Y are only 1 pair. So males tend to suffer higher mortality rates than females.

As I recall, males outnumber females for live births. But, females quickly outnumber males after a pretty early age (something like year 1 or 2 but I could be wrong on that).

So do divers have a greater chance of siring more females? I doubt that very much. What mechanism could possibly disable sperm carrying "Y" chromosomes over "X" chromosomes? There is no plausible explanation. In order to "prove" a difference, you would have to get the offspring of piles of male divers. That would take a really, really large sample size which would have to be in the 10s of thousands unless the difference observed was really big - such as no diver ever has a male offspring. I bet it hasn't been done. Medical research is notorious for its laxness compared to the "basic" scientists. My major professor used to say that "no medical study has ever failed to find what the researchers set out to find".

Most people do not appreciated the variation of the binomial distribution. One would think that the chance of having 5 children all of one gender (all males or all females) would be really small. But it is pretty common. It is 2/32 or 1/16 (assuming an even gender ratio which is close to true). That is about 5.7%. So you have piles of variation. To get around the variation, you have to run your statistics on a very large population. I bet that it has not been done.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

Back
Top Bottom