Boa Constrictors Can Have Babies Without Mating, New Evidence Shows.

This article discusses a new discovery at North Carolina State University, where a female boa constrictor gave birth to not one but two broods of all female young who were essentially clones of their mother with a rare recessive coloration they obtained from the mom. In other words this female who has reproduced sexually before, switched over and reproduced using parthenogenesis. They know this because snake males have two ZZ chromosomes and females have a Z and a W chromosome. Well these babies were born with two WW chromosomes a combination thought impossible until now. This genome has only been obtained before through complex lab manipulation, but even then they hadn’t been able to do it with snakes just in fish and amphibians. They are unsure why this occurred, stress normally is the trigger for asexual production in species that are capable of it, but this female was under no stress. In fact males were presented too her she just didn’t mate with them, she chose to reproduce by herself. They are unsure of what will happen to these young snakes as they age, they are most interested in how they will reproduce when they get older. Will they reproduce strictly by parthenogenesis or will they do both like their mother? I find this particularly interesting as I have been studying sexual and asexual reproduction in my Biology 315 class. For the most part we have only seen insects that reproduced this way so to see a large mammal reproducing this way is astonishing. Also makes me wonder what percentage of the boa constrictor population is capable of doing this and whether or not it is a recent development? This discovery is obviously going to call for big redo in the way we look at boa constrictor reproduction. Though it is possible that this is just a one of a kind female, it is unlikely that such an ability would work its way into a population at pure random. I think they have been doing things this way for a while we just never noticed it because they don’t do it often. After all if there are suitable males present then why should they reproduce asexually?

Adam Morehead.