Another “Virgin” Shark Birth!

In today’s Journal of Fish Biology, scientists have confirmed that a “pup” born to one of the Virginia Aquarium’s Atlantic blacktip sharks was conceived by “parthenogenesis,” meaning literally “virgin creation.” The shark, which had not been kept with a male shark in over 8 years, would have created the baby shark by a process that is still not understood well in sharks, but has been documented throughout the animal kingdom and in lesser vertebrates.

This is only the second time parthenogenesis had been documented in sharks, following the virgin birth of a bonnethead shark a couple of years ago at the Omaha Zoo Aquarium.

However, some sources have been quick to warn that this is a rare event, triggered by isolation and desperation, and not an answer to sharks’ rapid disappearance from many of the world’s oceans.

Additionally, these sharks are literal copies of their mother, which is very interesting, but not a solution to conservation: populations that experience a great deal of parthenogenic birth would experience a severe loss of genetic diversity and become vulnerable to catastrophic diseases and other threats.

Source: LAT