Well... the best Ghost on the planet just squirted out a whole mess more Ghosts and Anerythristics and not a single normal or Key West. More of those babies of the top shelf variety... however, that is miles from what I was hoping for.

Here she was ovulating 122 days ago:

http://www.boaconstrictor.net/gallery/data/552/key-ghost-ov-4-26-10-1.jpg

She was bred by this guy:

http://www.boaconstrictor.net/gallery/data/549/keywestboy3-6-3-091.jpg

Here is part of what she gave me this morning:

http://www.boaconstrictor.net/gallery/data/563/DSC0264.jpg

http://www.boaconstrictor.net/gallery/data/563/DSC0263.jpg

http://www.boaconstrictor.net/gallery/data/563/DSC0262.jpg

She has been courted in previous years by an Anery, but not for a second this season. She has never reproduced before. Never ovulated before. This season all she saw was two male Key West Boas. Apparently, not one sperm from those fellas found it's target.

I am, supremely disappointed...

Dr. Booth now has yet another project. This is my second Partho litter in two seasons. One last year as well. It's amazing to me that as far as we know there have been four total likely Partho litters and I have been saddled with two of them from two completely unrelated litters. I don't like Parthenogenetic litters one bit. Not one bit...

The only thing worse than this result for me today would have been a full litter of what I have been expecting only all still born. I am fundamentally grateful for the wonderful babies that I did have, but it's still a yucky day at the Boa Black Hole.

It could have been retained sperm. I will sex them in a few says. A litter of all females is most likely a Partho litter. For me that matters not. It's still a disappointment.

Yeah, disappointing compared to what you wanted, but still some smokin ghosts and anery's there for sure!

The little "bow ties" on a few of the ghosts are awesome too!


~Doug

If this litter was the result of parthogenesis wouldn't all the offspring have to be genetically identical to mom? It looks like you have ghosts and anery's.

Well congrats on the pretty babies. I'm sorry it wasn't what you anticipated.

Let us know what they sex out at. And, I am sorry you didn't get what you wanted, but they are some beautiful babies!

Hell, you don't want them? I'll take a few off your hands! Those ghosts are smoking!

If this litter was the result of parthogenesis wouldn't all the offspring have to be genetically identical to mom? It looks like you have ghosts and anery's.

Good point!!,..."that does not compute" as the robot on Lost in Space would say!..LOL!

Don't see how both anery's and ghosts would be produced either if perthogenesis was the case there, they should all be ghosts from what I understand. :dunno:

~Doug

Hell, you don't want them? I'll take a few off your hands! Those ghosts are smoking!

:yessir::cheers:

She has been courted in previous years by an Anery, but not for a second this season...

Umm, if she was courted in previous years by an Anery, and the litter has Anery and Ghost in it, wouldn't that be more likely a case of sperm retention rather then parthenogenetics? :dunno:

There has been documented cases of a female Boa retaining sperm for almost 2 years, then ovulating and having a healthy litter.

Either way, I think it's a right nice looking litter.

Congrats.:cheers:
Rick

It could be sperm retention. But it could also be Parthogenic. Since the Mother has only one copy of the Hypo gene she can either contribute one Hypo gene or one WT gene to the babies making all the babies either Anerys or Super Ghosts.

One way that a Parthenogenic litter can occur is this way; A female has her portion of eggs that she is born with. In the process of reproduction, which in Boas so far appears to require some level of at least courtship from the male, a female usually will reproduce in the normal fashion. That is sperm is deposited by the male and stored by the female for future fertilization of the eggs in the oviducts. These oviducts double as "wombs" in Boa Constrictors where after ovulation and fertilization, the Boa embryos are given what they need to be nurtured to full term self sufficient little predators. If this process is not followed in favor of the Parthenogenic method the resulting offspring are NOT genetic clones of the Mother as I once believed. In fact individual eggs are still needed to make these babies each one having half of the genetic code to make a full Boa Constrictor. Normally half the genetic information comes from the male and half from the female. Those two become joined to make one whole complete pair of chromosomes that contain all the information for a complete Boa.

In the case where no contribution is used from the male, those half sets of chromosomes simply "double up" on themselves to make one single complete and now "pair" of chromosomes within that single individual egg. The resulting offspring contain a pair of identical genetic information. This may be a bit of an oversimplification of reality, but I think I have the basics correct. The sex chromosome may have it's own additional little set of rules of possibilities. I am not entirely clear on that. But the basics I believe I do have correct.

If Parthenogenesis is responsible for this litter and NOT sperm retention, then you would expect Anerys AND Super Ghosts. The eggs that contained the Hypo gene would have that identical characteristic on both sides of that gene making the Ghosts Super Ghosts. That is really interesting isn't it.

Still it is possible that this is an instance of sperm storage. We will know about that soon enough.

By the way... I just sexed the babies. All girls.

I know this took a while for this to sink into my head so I'm sure at least some people will have to hear this more than once to grasp it. I'll try to explain again.

Offspring produced via Parthenogenesis are NOT identical to the mother. Not clones of the mother. That is what I thought for years. The Mom has a full compliment of eggs. Each egg is it's own unique individual that carries a random combination of genetic material from the mother. Each one is like a fingerprint or snowflake in that no two are identical.

Each embryo has identical halves of the genetic material that in "normally" produced offspring are NOT identical. This is because the genetic material normally contributed by the male sperm has been replaced with an identical set from within the egg. Again. Not identical to the Mother, but identical to itself and a unique individual.

First; as for the gene that controls if an individual offspring is an Anery or not, the Mother is Homozygous and Anerythristic. So as for that one of perhaps billions of different genetic traits, every single egg carries that Anery gene. After replicating itself, it is Homozygous for Anerythristic or visually an Anery. Every single Parthenogenically produced offspring from an Anery or Ghost female then by definition must be an Anery.

Secondly;as for the gene that controls if an individual offspring is a Hypo or not, in this case the Mother is Heterozygous for Hypo or a non-super. So for that one of perhaps billions of different genetic traits, half the eggs carry the Hypo gene. Half do not. After replicating itself, the resulting embryo it is Homozygous for Hypo and is visually a Hypo and in fact a "Super" Hypo or that particular gene does not have the Hypo gene at all and is "Homozygous" for non-hypo if you will.

the odds of that litter being sperm retention would be near zero. The number, phenotype and sex are all indicative of parthenogenesis.

You may be disapointed but from a science perspective this is a much more fascinating result.

You may be disapointed but from a science perspective this is a much more fascinating result.

I understand that, but I already had a Partho litter last year. I figured I'd done my part already... I was looking forward to these Hypo Key Wests and Key Wests het Anery in the worst way.

Man that sucks Jeff...

By the way... I just sexed the babies. All girls.

Now that is an interesting twist to things there.

I agree with you too, if I read your second post correctly, that in Parthenogenic occurrences, they would be homozygous at every loci in their make up. Or at least, that's how I understood it.

With your last one, were they also all female?


Sorry you didn't get what you were hoping for.

Now that is an interesting twist to things there.

I agree with you too, if I read your second post correctly, that in Parthenogenic occurrences, they would be homozygous at every loci in their make up. Or at least, that's how I understood it.

With your last one, were they also all female?


Sorry you didn't get what you were hoping for.

14 babies. All females and a mess of slugs.

I was hoping for half a litter of these:

http://www.boaconstrictor.net/gallery/data/549/keys-7359.jpg

Of which half of them would have been Hypo and all of them would have been Het Anerythristic.

Those are some good looking critters right there. Good luck on the next try! :cheers:

Sorry about the luck Jeff. If its any consolation I will take all the babies off your hands. LOL Beautiful snakes as usual.

Dan

You may be disapointed but from a science perspective this is a much more fascinating result.

I like science. But I love Key West Boas. I also love Anery and Ghost boas, but as much as I like to see a beautiful litter like that pop out - and in such a scientifically interesting way - The loss of those beautiful KWB's is pure tragedy in my opinion. After speaking to Jeff many times over the last few months and getting status updates on that female that all pointed to a perfect litter I was starting to see one of those little KWB het Anerys in my rack. As many beautiful new litters that have been born this year, this one was the one I was looking forward to the most.

So far there has only been one litter of Hypo KWB's produced, and I was anxiously awaiting Jeff's results just to add that information to my KWB knowledge base.

Next time lets hope for a Partho litter on a non-groundbreaking, earth-shattering, collection-building type pairing.

I understand that, but I already had a Partho litter last year. I figured I'd done my part already... I was looking forward to these Hypo Key Wests and Key Wests het Anery in the worst way.


I know. I'm still depressed about it. Please make more. :)

I absolutely love the Key West boas. If I can ever figure out how to have enough space for full size boas, I will have one. I am so sorry that this project didn't work out for you this year. It certainly would have been cool to see some hypo Key West boas this year.

However, I hadn't heard about parthenogenesis in boas before and I think that is incredibly cool! The fact that you have had two parthenogenetic litters in two years is amazing. Very, very cool result - but I'm so sorry it had to be a Key West litter.

sorry that you did not get what you wanted but those you got are sweet....