Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Reproduction occurs through parthenogenesis, with up to four unfertilized eggs being laid in mid summer, and hatching approximately eight weeks later. The New Mexico whiptail lizard is a crossbreed of a western whiptail, which lives in the desert, and the little striped whiptail, which favors grasslands. The whiptail engages in mating behavior ...
Parthenogenesis occurs naturally in some plants, algae, invertebrate animal species (including nematodes, some tardigrades, water fleas, some scorpions, aphids, some mites, some bees, some Phasmatodea, and parasitic wasps), and a few vertebrates, such as some fish, amphibians, and reptiles. This type of reproduction has been induced ...
Parthenogenesis is a mode of asexual reproduction in which offspring are produced by females without the genetic contribution of a male. Among all the sexual vertebrates, the only examples of true parthenogenesis, in which all-female populations reproduce without the involvement of males, are found in squamate reptiles (snakes and lizards). [1]
A common predator of the whiptail lizard is the leopard lizard that preys on A. uniparens by using ambush and stalk hunting tactics. [2] [3] [4] These reptiles reproduce by parthenogenesis. In this process, eggs undergo a chromosome doubling after meiosis, developing into lizards without being fertilized.
The process is called parthenogenesis, from the Greek words for “virgin” and “birth.” Some plants and insects can do it, as well as some amphibians, reptiles , birds and fish.
Parthenogenesis has been studied extensively in the New Mexico whiptail in the genus Aspidoscelis of which 15 species reproduce exclusively by parthenogenesis. These lizards live in the dry and sometimes harsh climate of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
Several species of whiptail lizards are entirely female and no males are known. [3] These all-female species reproduce by obligate parthenogenesis (obligate, because the lizards do not involve males and cannot reproduce sexually).
Cnemidophorus splendidus Markezich, Cole & Dessauer, 1997 – blue rainbow lizard; Cnemidophorus vanzoi (Baskin & E. Williams, 1966) – Saint Lucia whiptail, Vanzo's whiptail; Nota bene: A binomial authority in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than Cnemidophorus.