Parthenogenesis Comodo

River, a Komodo dragon at London Zoo, has been laying in early 2006 after being separated from males for more than two years. Scientists initially assumed that she is able to store sperm from her earlier encounter with a male in the past, an adaptation known as superfecundation.

On December 20, 2006, it was reported that Flora, the Komodo dragon living in the Chester Zoo, UK is the second known Komodo dragons produce eggs without fertilization (conception of marriage). He took out 11 eggs, and 7 of them hatched.

Scientists at Liverpool University in northern England performed genetic tests on three eggs that collapsed after being moved to an incubator, and verified that Flora had physical contact with a male. After this surprising finding, testing showed the eggs river and get that rose eggs produced without outside fertilization.

Komodo has a ZW chromosomal sex-determination system, instead of XY sex-determination system. Flora offspring that are male, indicating the occurrence of a few things. Flora is: that unfertilized eggs are haploid at first and then doubling the chromosomes themselves become diploid, and that he did not produce diploid eggs, as might happen if one cleavage-reduction process of meiosis in ovaries fail.

When a female Komodo dragon (have a ZW sex chromosomes) produce children in this manner, he left only one of the pairs of chromosomes they have, including one of the two sex chromosomes. A single set of chromosomes is then duplicated in the egg, which develops partenogenetika. Eggs that received Z chromosome will become ZZ (male), and who received a W chromosome will become WW and fail to develop.

Suspected that this sort of reproductive adaptation allows a female animal enters an isolated ecological niche (such as islands) and then by parthenogenesis produce male offspring. Through his marriage with it in the next time these animals can form a sexually reproducing population, because it can produce male and female offspring. Although such an adaptation, zoos are cautioned that parthenogenesis may be detrimental to genetic diversity.

On January 31, 2008, Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas became the first zoo to document parthenogenesis in Komodo dragons in America. The zoo has two adult female Komodo dragon, which one of them produced 17 eggs on May 19-20 2007. Only two eggs were incubated and hatched due to space availability issues, the first hatched on January 31, 2008, followed by the second on February 1. Both pups that are male