How can this female snake reproduce without the help of a male? According to MDC herpetologist Jeff Briggler, the female yellow-bellied water snakes can reproduce without a mate through a process known as parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis is a type of asexual reproduction “in which the offspring (babies) are produced by females without genetic contribution of a male.” But, snakes aren’t the only ones that use this process, incests, as well as some species of fish and birds are also capable of producing offspring through parthenogenesis.

Warren Booth, an evolutionary and population geneticist at North Carolina State University said female animals resort to parthenogenesis because they’re unable to find a suitable male to reproduce with.

Booth and Gordon Schuett, an evolutionary biologist and herpetologist, have investigated snake parthenogenesis for several years. Concluding that female snakes resort to parthenogenesis to conserve their eggs. Booth told Live Science in 2011 ” in other words, if they can’t find somebody good enough to fertilize their eggs for them, female snakes take matters into their own “hands,” rather than allowing their eggs to go to waste.”

How does parthenogenesis actually work?

For the female yellow-bellied water snakes to asexually reproduce they must carry out meiosis, cell division that creates four egg-progenitor cells each with half the number of chromosomes of the parent cell, one of which becomes the egg. The strange part about parthenogenesis is that after meiosis, instead of the females body reabsorbing the remaining three egg-progenitor cells, one of those cells behaves like a sperm cell and fertilizes the egg. Resulting in an embryo composed of genetic material only from the female.

According to Booth and Schuetts studies, in some cases females actually store sperm from old mates that they interacted with before they reached sexual maturity. Then, when they’re grown up and mature, they use the sperm to fertilize their own eggs. But, this isn’t parthenogenesis.

Study Results

This past September, a yellow-bellied water snake at the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center that has been isolated from relations for eight years gave birth to a litter of baby snakes. This is the second year in a row that this female snake has gone through parthenogenesis. According to Booth and Schuett, the longest recorded time a female snake has stored sperm has been for five years. So, if their study is accurate, this female snake has set a new record by being able to store sperm for 8 years.

Missouri Department of Conservation’s is now teaming up with Booth and Schuett to analyze the geneticists of the DNA of the baby snakes to figure out if they have DNA from both a male and female snake, or if the female actually went through parthenogenesis.

Work Cited

http://www.livescience.com/52286-water-snake-virgin-birth.html

http://www.livescience.com/52489-meiosis.html