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violent female pit vipers can reproduce without a male , suggesting virtuous birth may take place in nature far more than before cerebration .
nonsexual reproduction is common among invertebrates — that is , creature without backbones . It occur rarely in vertebrates , but examples of it are increasingly being discovered . For instance , the Komodo dragon , the world ’s gravid living lounge lizard , has given birth via parthenogeny , in which an unfertilised bollock develops to due date . Suchvirgin birthshave also been seen insharksat least twice ; in birds such as chickens and turkeys ; and in Snake River such aspit vipersandboa constrictor .
A female copperhead snake (Agkistrodon contortrix) and her offspring born via parthenogenesis, also called virgin birth, described in a study reported Sept. 12, 2012 in the journal Biology Letters.
Although virgin birth has been observed in vertebrates in captivity , scientists had not yet run into it happen in the natural state . This raise the opening that such asexual reproduction might just be a rarefied curiosity outside the mainstream of vertebrate evolution .
" Until this discovery , facultative parthenogeny — asexual reproduction by a normally intimate specie — has been consider a wrapped syndrome , " said researcher Warren Booth , a molecular ecologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma . [ 7 Shocking Snake Stories ]
Now , genetic depth psychology reveals deterrent example of vestal birthing in two closely related specie of pit viper snakes — the copperhead ( Agkistrodon contortrix ) andcottonmouth(Agkistrodon piscivorus ) .
Mama ’s progeny
The researchers collected hereditary sample from long - terminal figure studies of the snakes — copperheads from Connecticut and cottonmouths from Georgia . They gathered specimens from 22 litters of copperheads and 37 litters of cottonmouths , both the mothers and their offspring . DNA analysis sustain that in one litter from each mintage , the materialisation were solely the production of the mother , with no genetic contribution from a Father of the Church .
The researchers were able-bodied to analyze the large amount of information due to collaborations with Charles Smith and Pam Eskridge of the Copperhead Institute and Wofford College , S.C. , and Shannon Hoss , a graduate student at San Diego State University .
" We just sat there stunned at the breakthrough , " Booth tell LiveScience . " This is something that we always consider existed , but so as to investigate it , it would take a monumental amount of work in the champaign . … To detect it in both species in our first endeavor was astounding . "
" I think the frequency is what really shocked us , " Booth added . " In the Denisonia superba universe , we detected one instance in 22 bedding material , whereas in the cottonmouth moccasin , it was one in 37 litter . fundamentally , somewhere between 2.5 and 5 percent of litters produced in these populations may be lead from parthenogeny . That ’s quite singular for something that has been consider an evolutionary novelty , even by me up until this determination . "
Pit vipers and many other creatures run out meiosis , in which jail cell divideto shape sex cells , each of which only own half the cloth want to make offspring . In the female cavity vipers , pairs of their sexual activity cells likely mix to generate conceptus . The results were progeny that include only the female parent ’s genetical stuff . However , these progeny were n’t clone of the female parent since they were not made using identical half of her genome .
What limit virginal giving birth ?
How rife , then , is virgin nascence ? And could it perhaps put out to world ?
" In term of other species , it is evident now that reptiles are a group that come along predispose to parthenogenesis , whether facultative , as we deal here , or obligate , where the primary reproductive mode is parthenogenesis and few or no male are know within the species , " Booth said .
Obligate parthenogeny may have rebel from patrimonial interbreeding between mintage , though scientists are n’t sure why some brute seem to willy-nilly give birth without help from the male ( the facultative type ) .
" What is usual to those that reproduce facultatively is the want ofgenomic imprinting — by that , I mean a outgrowth in which a specific set of cistron are provided by the female parent , and a second exercise set from the father , " Booth said . " These genes of different parental origin must interact in a operation called genomic imprinting in order for the ontogenesis of an embryo . This , as far as we are cognizant , occurs in all mammals with the exception of the monotremes — platypus and echidnas — and therefore explains why we can not have facultative parthenogeny in mammalian coinage without significant intercession by scientists . " [ The 10 Wackiest Animal find ]
Originally , Booth and his workfellow imagine such virgin births might take place if likely mates were not present , but over the years , they have seen six captive female boa constrictor give birth via parthenogeny even when male were around during their breeding cycles . The number of times virgin births have pass off with different female person also seem to rule out a freak accident causing it to come , Booth and colleague said . They are now investigating other possible lawsuit for these vestal giving birth — " these include genetics , computer virus , tumors and bacterium , " Booth tell .
In the future , the researchers also hope to investigate other coinage for virgin births , such as water snakes in Oklahoma . In addition , they be after to see how well the young of virgin births survive and reproduce . It may be that virgin mother can instal whole sphere populations of snakes by themselves . " We will fuck if this is potential in the next two to three years , " Booth say .
The scientists detail their findings online Sept. 12 in the journal Biology Letters .
