We had a litter in June '08 from a first time breeding of a female Motley poss het albino to a coral albino. She delivered a litter at POS+107 that consisted of 22 slugs, 6 normals, and 2 supermotleys (1 of these a kinked up d.o.a.). All 8 babies were female.
My thoughts went immediately to parthenogenesis, with this litter having similarities to a case posted extensively on KS two or three years ago that I recall was a male jungle bred to a female hypo with all the offspring being female and apparently superhypos and normals. The all female offspring was consistent with the female offspring demonstrated to have been produced parthenogenetically by a Burmese python. That journal artical can be viewed/downloaded from www.nature.com/hdy -just enter "parthenogenesis Burmese python" (without the quotes) in the search box, click go, and it will be the only search result. However, in that study the offspring were shown to be genetically identical to (i.e., clones of) their mother.
Similar to that weird hypo litter, this mama Motley's offspring are clearly not genetically identical to her because none of them are Motley, only normals and supers. Initially, this result would also seem to imply that the parthenogenetic mechanism would be one of those that results in each offspring being homozygous at all loci (i.e., that each chromosome pair is comprised of two strands of DNA that are exact replicas). However, the all female result is contradictory because sex determination in boas is ZW (not XY as in mammals, for example), with ZW being female, ZZ being male, and WW being non-viable. As such, the completely homozygous result would produce all males (ZZ) and non-viables (WW) - this is the case with Komodo Dragons, for example. So, if this Motley litter result is due to parthenogenesis, it must be by a mechanism different than what was demonstrated in Burmese pythons, and also different from what has been demonstrated in some other snakes, lizards and other critters.
This litter result obviously is not necessarily a result of parthenogenesis. Similar litters resulting from male Motleys bred to normal (not Motley) females certainly would seem to indicate that parthenogenesis is not the answer (though I didn't see much regarding the sex of the offspring in the other responses; if other than all female, could indicate a different phenomenon altogether). Perhaps Mr. Ronne has a theory?
Jeff - I'm out through the weekend but can send you pics and additional info next week if you're interested, including "weird litter" summaries from a few other breeders. Interesting puzzle.
Steve Reiners
www.BoaMorph.com
