In early June 2023, news broke that an 18-year-old female crocodile, which had always been kept away from male specimens, had managed to reproduce on her own in January 2018.
This happened in Costa Rica, at the Parque Reptilaria, and was later examined by experts at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. How was this possible? The results were published in 'Biology Letters', a specialist journal of the Royal Society.
The phenomenon is known as facultative partogenesis in vertebrates and the one documented in Costa Rica was the first case involving a crocodile.
In early June 2023, news broke that an 18-year-old female crocodile, which had always been kept away from male specimens, had managed to reproduce on her own in January 2018. This happened in Costa Rica, at the Parque Reptilaria, and was later examined by experts from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
How was this possible? The results were published in Biology Letters, a specialist journal of the Royal Society. The phenomenon is known as facultative partogenesis in vertebrates and the one documented in Costa Rica was the first case involving a crocodile.
Facultative partogenesis in vertebrates has previously been documented in snakes (boas and pythons), lizards, birds (California condors and turkeys) and in some subclasses of fish such as rays, sharks and torpedoes. In all these cases, the mother is capable of self-fertilisation. And as was verified in the case of the crocodile, the foetus turned out to have 99.9% of the same genome as that of the mother.
At present, it is difficult to establish what could cause voluntary partogenesis in vertebrates. Experts believe that in the case of crocodiles, for example, this may have already occurred several times but had never been noticed and studied. Among the most popular hypotheses is that voluntary partogenesis in vertebrates may be a natural response in endangered species.
The researchers would also have specified that voluntary partogenesis in vertebrates should be a characteristic that developed in a very ancient common ancestor in the evolutionary line of reptiles, in the case of crocodiles. This characteristic would also have been maintained in the evolutionary line of dinosaurs and later passed on to birds.