Parthenogenesis in gargoyle geckos...kind of...

[prairiepanda]

I got my female gargoyle gecko when she was 15g(and was sold to me as a male ) in January of last year, from a breeder who houses all his babies individually. If you're wondering about the male listed in my signature, it is a 9g baby that I was inspired to get after I discovered the egg of interest...and he should really be listed as a 0.0.1 but I'm determined to have him turn out to be male!! She gave me two dud eggs last fall, and has given me two more clutches this spring. Her first two clutches were oddly shaped, poorly calcified, and discolored, so I didn't bother candling them. But her newest clutch looked very much like normal eggs, so I decided to candle them. One was as I expected: straight yellow all the way through. But to my surprise the other one contained the magic cheerio of fertility! I set up both the eggs in a barebones incubator to see what would happen. The one that looked empty to begin with turned soft and smelly after a week so I got rid of it. But the other one continued to develop! I took pictures of the progress, probably more often than I should have, but it has been interesting nonetheless. But a warning to the squeamish: the egg did not make it to full term and I have extracted a deformed embryo from within, of which there are photos if you continue to scroll down.

I incubated at 26C on perlite which was mixed 1:1 with water by weight, in a dual lock container with a few ventilation holes. The perlite was changed twice throughout incubation due to the appearance of mold, which never touched the egg.

I didn't take a picture when I first candled it, because I'm silly, but here it is at day 7: (brown spots are stains from eco earth that the egg was laid in)
http://i.imgur.com/gxjG8Tr.jpg

Day 14:
http://i.imgur.com/2T2XBqu.jpg

Day 21:
http://i.imgur.com/ewLMDLu.jpg

Day 28:
http://i.imgur.com/CXGmNUa.jpg

And on day 35 we finally see something other than a cheerio:
http://i.imgur.com/PHw8yBi.jpg

Day 42:
http://i.imgur.com/hvdc5Ol.jpg

Day 49:
http://i.imgur.com/4ogGYCj.jpg

I did continue to candle after that, but saw no further changes whatsoever.

Aaand that's my photo limit so I'll have to double post!

[prairiepanda]

On day 62, the egg began to shrink and started to ooze sticky fluid in three places. I let it ooze overnight, and in the morning it had caved in. There was no movement when I candled the egg, and of course it still looked the same inside as it had on day 49, so I made the decision to cut it open. Here is what I found inside:
http://i.imgur.com/V5Dq0kB.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vhZzB3A.jpg

It appears that even if the egg had made it to full term, the baby wouldn't have survived. It did develop a complete skull, all four legs(plus toes that you can't really see here) and a tail, but it had numerous serious problems. Aside from having only one eye, its heart and what I assume to be its liver(based on location only; I didn't dissect it to confirm what lies under the yellow layer) had developed outside of the body, and a large amount of fluid had accumulated under the skin throughout the body, most notably on the top of the head.

Now, I can't say for certain whether these deformities were cause by poor husbandry on my part with my lack of experience and/or excessive candling or were simply a result of the egg being produced parthenogenically in a species that is not properly equipped to reproduce in such a manner. I searched through every resource available to me(which is a substantial amount of literature, as I am a university student), but could not find any information that could help me decide whether it is reasonable to expect partho gargoyle gecko offspring to be fully viable. However, I have read about two similar cases(I don't think I'm allowed to link to other forums so I didn't bother to dig them up). In one case, the embryo had stopped developing around the same time as mine and the egg went bad after around 70 days, but no apparent deformities were seen on the embryo. In the other case, the embryo had developed quite far beyond what mine had, having proper skin and some ability to move its arms when it was extracted from the egg(alive!) at 70 days. However, it shared many of the same deformities as my embryo did, including excessive fluid buildup under the skin, heart and liver(or at least a substantial portion of the internal chest wall; hard to tell on their specimen) outside of the body.

I think it would be worthwhile for keepers of virgin females to candle their eggs and try incubating any that appear fertile. A sample size of 3 doesn't tell me much, and it's clear to me that there's not much, if any, useful research going on with this species. Apparently it is possible for gargoyle geckos to produce fertile parthenogenic eggs, but the bigger question is: can they reproduce this way? Or are all partho garg eggs doomed? We can't even tell how common, or uncommon, this occurrence really is because most people would just throw such eggs away assuming they're duds.

[Albert Clark]

Thank you for all that information and also your intense research to find a answer. Great work .;)

[millertime89]

Very cool! Sad, but cool.

[prairiepanda]

Very cool! Sad, but cool.

I agree! As sad as it is to see what happened to the little guy, it raises some big questions. I'm very interested in confirming whether this death and the other two I have heard of have been a result of bad luck or of some developmental issue arising from having no male gamete contribution. If the latter turns out to be the case, finding the limiting factor might make a good graduate thesis for...someone....:shocked:

[Bloutitt]

Very interesting :D good read.

[FWK]

I'm not a huge gecko fan (they have to many legs for my taste), but this is fascinating. Excellent work, documenting the whole process. Thanks for sharing.