Fascinating Snake Virgin Birth

[Deep Sea Isopod]

I'm just wondering how being a WW makes it a female, when females are ZW?

And how will that effect the WW's offspring, not having a Z gene at all? Will they only be able to have females?

[GeneticJen]

I'm just wondering how being a WW makes it a female, when females are ZW?

And how will that effect the WW's offspring, not having a Z gene at all? Will they only be able to have females?

Not sure. For most species, WW simply fails. ZZ is male, WZ is female. My Lepidodactylus lugubris essentially clone themselves. ZW females have ZW offspring. All female. Then look at something like Varanus komodoensis (Komodo Dragon), which produced only male offspring via parthenogenesis. Before scientists even got to study the offspring or run any tests, they already had a bit of an idea about what was going on. The mother's haploid gametes would duplicate their chromosomes so that Z (n) would become ZZ (2n) and W (n) would become WW (2n). This would explain why there weren't any females being born. The ZZ results in males like usual, and the WW results in sweet fuck all, like usual.

What makes the new WW offspring of the snake female? I guess they are coming to this conclusion based on the anatomy. Will they be able to have offspring? Well, I want to say no since WW tend to fail. But with this bunch I guess anything is possible.