Reptiles and facultative parthenogenesis

If you understand the title of this post, you have my undying respect. Most people wrongly assume  that asexual reproduction only occurs in prokaryotes and plants, by binary fission or runners for example, however animals can also reproduce in this manner, and not via divine impregnation. Seriously, if you are a devout catholic I suggest you leave this page and maybe read the Bible instead. In parthenogenesis an embryo develops from an unfertilised egg and the process occurs perfectly naturally in invertebrates like scorpions, and also in a select few vertebrates, like the Komodo Dragon (yes, it deserves capital letters). A normal egg cell produced by meiosis has the haploid number of chromosomes, as the other half of the offspring's genome is made up by the father's haploid sperm cell. However in parthenogenesis such haploid individuals are non-viable (may die during embryonic development or have a low zygote hybrid vigour) , and the parthenogenic offspring must often be diploid. Therefore full clones produced by parthenogenesis develop without the need for meiosis to manufacture haploid gametes in parents. But how is an embryo produced without without fertilisation? I hear you scream. Well, a mature egg cell is produced from mitotic oogenesis, which then develops directly into an embryo. This process is known as apomitic parthenogenesis, and is the less complex branch of the phenomenon. When parthenogenesis does occur with meiosis, offspring may be haploid, like the male ant, however there is often a complicated chain of processes which occur to restore diploidy to the offspring, in order to make them viable. However these offspring are only half clones of the parent organism, so they are genetically in-identical. But what I really want to talk about are the facultatively parthenogenic Komodo Dragons, which usually reproduce sexually, but can occasionally reproduce asexually. Therefore, when no viable males are present in a habitat, a female can ensure the survival of the species via parthenogenesis, making them more resistant to extinction than most species. What I particularly like about the Komodo Dragon, apart from its totally awesome name, is its ZW-sex determination, in which ZZ genotypes create males, ZW creates females, and in rare cases the WW genotype creates a female, however it is mostly unviable. Komodo Dragons are just too awesome for the XY sex determination system, although that may be a rather subjective analysis. In conclusion, the fact that an intelligent organism can clone itself in a pinch, to ensure the continued evolution of its species, is an incredible feat of mother nature. Imagine if we could induce parthenogenesis in humans? I mean, we've done it in fish...Actually, I don't like what I'm imagining. Bye!