Sex and the single snake - who needs males?

From Wikipedia

Female reptiles don't always need to mate with males to have offspring. Snakes, Komodo dragons, and lizards have all given birth without sex. These have been females that were kept in zoos, labs or homes, and for some time people thought that parthenogenesis, the scientific name for virgin births, was the just effect of captivity.
But did this happen in the wild? It was difficult to know because some females reptiles can store male sperm for months or years, presumably waiting for a good time to be pregnant, ie a time when there is plenty of food and the right environment. So just because a wild reptile seemed to give birth without mating, it wasn't necessarily so. It was just delayed ordinary conception.
Then scientists, led by Warren Booth, examined 22 litters from broad banded copperhead snakes, A. contortrix,  and 37 litters from pit vipers, A. piscivorus, all from pregnant females collected in the wild. They did a DNA analysis and concluded this was automictic parthenogenesis. This probably means that when the original reproductive cell splits into two, the two new cells merge with each other and then start reproducing themselves (if I understood the process correctly).  The parthenogenesis found in reptiles like a blind snake and some lizards who automatically practice virgin birth is different and I will blog about this later.
This means that if a female snake or lizard cannot find a mate, she can give birth anyway. Aren't reptiles fascinating?  We mammals can't do this!

For more details read: Booth, W., Smith, C., Eskridge, P. H., Hoss, S. K., Mendelson, J. R. & Schuett, G.W., (2012), 'Facultative Parthenogenesis Discovered in Wild Vertebrates', Biology Letters, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2012.0666

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