Might not be enough to save species from extinction though.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: The first virgin births in the wild have been documented among endangered Smalltooth Sawfish in Florida.
The discovery, reported in the journal Current Biology, marks the first time that living offspring from virgin births — births where the mother did not mate with a male — have been found in a normally sexually reproducing animal in its natural habitat.
Until now, evidence of virgin births in vertebrates — animals with backbones — only came from animals in captivity. Asexual reproduction, also known as parthenogenesis, is a common trait of invertebrates.
“Vertebrate animals that we always thought were restricted to reproducing via sex in the wild actually have another option that does not involve sex,” study co-author Demian Chapman, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University in New York, told Live Science. “Rare species, like those that are endangered or colonizing a new habitat, may be the ones that are doing it most often. Life finds a way.”
While the virgin births could help to keep the population going for a while longer, they are not significant enough to save the sawfish from extinction.
The study “should serve as a wake-up call that we need serious global efforts to save these animals,” said Kevin Feldheim of the Pritzker Laboratory at the Field Museum of Chicago to Discovery News.
While research into virgin births is ongoing, thus far, the phenomenon has not been reported for any mammal outside of a lab setting. According to Discovery, researchers suspect genetic imprinting prevents mammals from undergoing such births naturally.