Studies reveal that Female copperhead snakes have the capability of giving birth to a viable offspring without coming into sexual contact with the male a counterpart. Such studies refute the traditional idea that asexual reproduction is only possible in invertebrates. Reproduction by definition is the process by which living organisms give rise to an offspring of same species. Two types of reproduction exist; they include asexual and sexual reproduction. Female copperhead snake experiences both types of reproduction and thus fall under a category of Facultative parthenogenetic species.
Asexual reproduction is the process that involves a living organism giving rise to an offspring of same species without gamete fusion. Copperhead snake or the Agkistrodon contortrix, according to different studies, can undergo asexual reproduction. As a result, female copperhead snake undergoes a process that stems from parthenogenesis process. The development of the embryo from an egg cell that is free from fertilization results to parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis is, therefore, a component of the apomixis process. In the case of the female copperhead that undergoes asexual reproduction, the offspring are female since such snakes are clones of the mother. In this case, the reproduction is occurring due to the presence of two overrise with no testes in the offspring. The situation increases the level of homozygosity in such offspring ( Fields et al., 2015). Furthermore, the case implicates that parthenogenesis may be a terminal automixis fusion. “It results from the fusion of second polar body to the egg nucleus, and therefore homozygosity is observed in all chromosomes including chromosomes involved in sex determination.”
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As a result of wide homozygosity, conservation of the species is possible due to fixation of deleterious genetic recombination. In this case, there is no variation in species as a result of conservation of the gene reduction that induces a decrease in evolutionary adaptation.
On the other hand, sexual reproduction is the process that involves the fusion of male and female gametes from different parents. In the case of the sexual production, the offspring stems from the fusion of the two parents' gametes. As a result, the sexual reproduction depends on the meiosis process. Meiosis is a process which involves nuclear division into four cells. “In typical diploid species, meiosis involves reduction division b meiosis of 2n (diploid) cells to n (haploid) cells.”In the case of the female copperhead snake, their sexual reproduction results in a high degree of diversity due to the production of the haploid daughter cells which after sometimes, becomes the gamete. In this case, the introduction of the genetic variation is through the crossing over in a situation where the non-sister chromatids stem from the tetrad genetic material exchange. The genetic variation can also come about in a case where the crossing over allows alleles are shuffling and thus, brings about a genetic recombination.
I think it would be to its advantage if female copperhead snake reproduces sexually. According to Mandela's Principle of inheritance, "inheritance involves the passing of discrete units of inheritance, or genes, from parents to offspring.” It implicates that sexual production is the viable option to achieve diversity ( Jordan, Perrine-Ripplinger & Carter, 2015). As a result, female copperhead snake would achieve diversity with sexual reproduction, and this is critical for its survival and that of the offspring in their environment. Other than survival, sexual reproduction is crucial since it would reduce the chances of copperhead snake’s extinction.
References
Fields, A. T., Feldheim, K. A., Poulakis, G. R., & Chapman, D. D. (2015). Facultative parthenogenesis in a critically endangered wild vertebrate. Current Biology , 25 (11), R446-R447.
Jordan, M. A., Perrine-Ripplinger, N., & Carter, E. T. (2015). Independent observation of facultative parthenogenesis in the copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix). Journal of Herpetology , 49 (1), 118-121.
