Partho mom produces males?

Looks like Chester is correct about balls being XY. I was mistaken.

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Well, now we’re back where we started and I’m still confused. :rofl:

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Found this article while searching for something to clear things up. It’s possible that we simply don’t know enough about how sex chromosomes work in boas and pythons.

From the article:

facultative parthenogenesis in pythons and boas leads to exclusively female progeny

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Ok, so now I’m really wanting to know the answer to the question: How young can a female ball python start storing sperm for future use?

Cause that might answer the question.
Otherwise, I don’t see how there could be males in the clutch. Right? Am I still missing something?

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If a mature female is bred she could start storing sperm (possibly younger, I’m not sure). However this isn’t the case with this female as she wasn’t introduced to a male and 3 clutches of partho were produced. @chesterhf Is genetic testing possible and reasonable to figure out the chromosome count?

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Yes, Warren has done this countless times

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In that case, I would think it would be best to have the original snake genetically tested to see how many and which chromosomes it has.

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Okay, this is just a thought but I figured I’d share it. From research I’ve found it seems that @squidman is right that females are heterozygous and males are homozygous. It seems that 99% of the time only females are produced from parthenogenesis (female’s passed on allele is dominant?) but it would explain how the female had the male’s genes (the allele has to originally be present to show up in offspring, not including mutations). From this thread there’s this qote:

I have a few ideas what this could conclude but what are your thoughts on how this correlates with this case? I also found the terminology “androgenesis”, I know what it is but I don’t understand it. I don’t know if this could apply to this case.

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This is not correct for “primitive” snake lineages like the entire Boidae group. Warren Booth has shown that both boas and pythons are XX female and XY male. So a female python can only produce female parthenogenetic offspring

In more advanced species, colubrids and vipers, the females are WZ and the males are WW. In those cases, a female can make WW or ZZ parthenogenetic offspring. But classically, the ZZ genotype is lethal.
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Andro is most easily thought of a male partho. You get a half-clone of the father. So it would not apply here
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I spoke with Warren and asked him to hop over here. Seems he has not made it yet but in our conversation he said that either this animal has been paired or that the offspring are not being sexed properly. You cannot get males form a partho event

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Does andro occur after the male breeds and the females genes aren’t passed on (a “faulty” embryo)?

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From what’s been said here, I think it’s clear that Mom must have been exposed to a male at some point and is producing clutches with retained sperm. I would be interested to know how long a female can retain sperm, and how many clutches she can produce with one “sample.” So far she has produced three, each one diminishing in size.

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Last year, the St Louis zoo claimed to have a 62-year old ball python (yeah, I’m kinda dubious too, but this is a proper zoo saying so) lay eggs using stored sperm after supposedly being without a male for decades.

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Riley, I hope he answers this :wink:

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This is a really interesting discussion.
I’ve heard of Lepidodactylus lugubris which to my knowledge is an exclusively partho species occasionally throwing random males.
I also remember reading a paper that concluded that komodo dragons asexual reproduction results in male offspring.

Mostly this is just a follow dot to continue watching this conversation and any new developments with it :slight_smile:

Movie GIF

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One important thing I think some should be reminded of about ball pythons being males XY and female XX, is the genetic behavior with the banana morph in particular.

That is the only way to explain how you can have banana males that are either male maker or female maker, and why banana females can potentially produce male or female banana offspring… as the banana morph is sex linked.

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I’ve heard of males escaping and finding breeding sized females, is there any chance that might have happened?

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Is the Coral Glow morph also sex linked? Since it is similar to the Banana morph.

Coral glow is the same as banana. 2 names for the same gene.

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I thought it was just two different strains of the same morph, thank you. I haven’t bred any banana or coral glow morphs yet, but I will be breeding coral glow soon.