Few animals have babies without sex, so biologists assumed asexual reproduction must have evolutionary drawbacks. But a self-cloning Australian grasshopper shows things might be more complicated.
Getting the job done. A female Asian water dragon (Physignathus cocincinus) produced a daughter (left) without the assistance of a male.
Skip Brown/Smithsonian’s National Zoo
Mercedes Burns, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Parthenogenesis, a form of reproduction in which an egg develops into an embryo without being fertilized by sperm, might be more common than you realized.
The female longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, crawling on a leaf.
Jim Occi, Rutgers Center for Vector Biology
There is a new type of tick spreading in New Jersey, and it doesn’t need a male to reproduce. It’s known to spread disease and is proving
difficult to eradicate.