Virgin Birth?

Hey everyone, I'm new to the forum and I have a question I hope someone can help me with. I was watching Brian Barczyk and he was talking about how his Reticulated Python had a virgin birth. Is this where a snake gets pregnant by herself? If so, how? He didn't explain much and he used some other words I couldn't make out, so that's why I'm asking. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

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Its called parthenogenesis, and its rare... I'm sure others will weigh in more.

I've just been reading up about it myself accidentally. Sounds cool.

Oh ok, so that's what he was saying, and yeah it does. I never heard of anything like it and I'm very interested in learning more.

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Parthenogenesis is highly unlikely, while cases in BP have been reported however not much was known about the animals in question, it was more likely retained sperm instead.

Now is it possible yes but again you would probably more likely to win the lottery.

An animal cell normally contains two sets ofchromosomes. In an animal’s gonads, aparticular type of cell division called meiosis produces gametes (egg or spermcells) that have contain only one set.At fertilization the egg and sperm unite to produce a cell with thenormal compliment of two sets.In thecase of parthenogenesis that step is skipped in the production of eggs, andeach egg receives the full compliment of the females chromosomes and these eggsare viable.

Dr Gordon Schuett and colleges have been doing extensiveresearch on DNA in herps and have found much parthenogenesis more common thenoriginally thought. With the recentadvances in DNA sequencing is much easier to establish whether or notparthenogenesis has occurred.Quitesimply, if an offspring’s DNA is identical to it’s mother’s, you can be 100percent sure that parthenogenesis has occurred; and yes it does occur in ballpythons.

Thank you both and man that's Pretty cool.

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Wow, that actually throws a wrench into my confidence in genetics. So you can put a male pied with a female normal and get babies, but are those babies really het pied or was it a virgin birth? I saw the same video about Brian, the only way he knew is that all three babies looked like the mom and the timing of the egg laying was too early based on when he put the male in there. But if he was breeding a recessive and the timing was right he would have never known. That really throws into question all the het recessive genes out there, more of a gamble than I thought it would be. I wonder what the odds of a virgin birth are? I've never really heard of anyone having a female snake that laid viable eggs by herself, it was the first I've ever heard about it.

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Originally Posted by cchardwick

Wow, that actually throws a wrench into my confidence in genetics. So you can put a male pied with a female normal and get babies, but are those babies really het pied or was it a virgin birth? I saw the same video about Brian, the only way he knew is that all three babies looked like the mom and the timing of the egg laying was too early based on when he put the male in there. But if he was breeding a recessive and the timing was right he would have never known. That really throws into question all the het recessive genes out there, more of a gamble than I thought it would be. I wonder what the odds of a virgin birth are? I've never really heard of anyone having a female snake that laid viable eggs by herself, it was the first I've ever heard about it.

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I watched some of his other videos leading up to the egg cutting a few hours ago and he said something about the mother ovulating so he put a male in there to help fertilize her eggs so there could have a been a change that the eggs could have had both parents genetics but he couldn't have been 100% sure because there was only 3 eggs. They all just happened to come out like the mother. He said it was more and likely a virgin birth because of the timing the eggs where laid, and all of them may have not been fertilized, could have been why there was only 3. It does make me curious about the genetics too. Like would a 2 gene animal come from 2 1 gene animals or 1 2 gene mother and does it also cause problems with the babies being born like that. It's all pretty fascinating to me.

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I would think it would be similar to a clone, so if you had a four gene female that went through parthenogenesis you would end up with all four gene babies. Correct? I've actually seen someone breed a Bamboo ball python with a male that had different genes and all the babies came out Bamboo. I thought, what are the odds? Maybe it was a normal looking super Bamboo? But now I think it may have really been parthenogenesis. This is starting to make sense. There's some really odd stuff happening out there and it just takes some time to figure it all out.

And it's apparently extremely rare. He said in one video that's his 2nd time ever having to deal with this situation and your right about not knowing. It really does concerns me about the hets and possible hets being sold.

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Further reading on parthenogenesis in snakes:

http://snakesarelong.blogspot.com/2016_06_01_archive.html

and

http://snakesarelong.blogspot.com/20...1_archive.html

I have been researching parthenogenesis in my lab (https://www.booth-lab.org) for around 7 years. In contrast to what others might think (or say), it is actually very common in snakes. Our recent paper actually (https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/dfa18...7dba7306c5.pdf) reviews the many cases in snakes and from these we define two forms or classes of facultative parthenogenesis.

We have also reported the longest genetically confirmed case of sperm storage in any vertebrate (at over 5 years in an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake. Given the list of characteristics we outline in our paper, it is very easy to actually make an informed guess as to whether the eggs or babies result from parthenogenesis or sperm storage.

Thinking back to the BHB video. His retic was a tiger het for albino. The male it was bred paired to was an albino. The outcome from sexual reproduction is very simple

Normal het albino
Tiger het albino
Albino
Albino tiger.

Given that facultative parthenogenesis produces half clones of the mother due to the egg nucleus fusing with the second polar body, the outcome from that would be:

normal
super tiger
albino
albino super tiger

The key here is whether the babies were super tigers or not. If tigers, then it was not parthenogenesis.

He states that his eggs are tigers. As such, it cannot be parthenogenesis. I do not watch his videos (other than part of this one which i was directed), so I do not known if he ever followed up with these babies out of the eggs. But, if he states tiger and not super tiger, it is not parthenogenesis. Brian does not appear to understand parthenogenesis in snakes (that's cool as many do not). He mistakenly assumes the babies will be clones of the mother, which the will not in snakes other than the Brahminy Blind snake.

Warren