Virgin Birth Recorded in Female Crocodile in Costa Rica

Researchers have reported the first-ever virgin birth in crocodiles, where an 18-year-old crocodile living alone laid 14 eggs through asexual reproduction. However, none of the eggs hatched, and only seven appeared to be fertile. One egg contained a stillborn fetus that lacked paternal genes, confirming the virgin birth hypothesis. The researchers opened up the eggs to study them more closely and found that the offspring had identical genotypes to the mother at greater than 99.9% of her homozygous loci, demonstrating a lack of paternal alleles.