NZ Herald/NZPA: Female stick insects happy to go it alone

Research into New Zealand’s stick insects have shown that female stick insects do not need male stick insects in order to produce offspring.

The behaviour, which results only in female offspring, is more common in the south, but could be a result of ‘range expansion’.

An excerpt: (read in full here)

“The team also took females out of sexual populations and raised them on their own. Despite the lack of a male to mate with, the stick insects that usually reproduced sexually were capable of reproducing asexually.

“Females from sexual populations that had access to mates did not reproduce asexually, even though they were capable of doing so.”