A 'Virgin Birth'?

It's been a while since I've logged on here but I couldn't resist to share the article I recently read up on from ScienceDaily.com. Apparently there has been a second case of a 'virgin birth' by a shark. The first was discovered back in 2007 on a female hammerhead and the recent case was that of a female blacktip shark named Tidbit. In the case of Tidbit, she had only recently sexually matured but hadn't had any contact with male sharks in the eight years she was at the aquarium. Unfortunately this discovery came about when she died and was undergoing a necroscopy. There was no evidence of a genetic father in the pup and they were surprised she was even pregnant. The important discovery of this to scientists was not so much that they underwent parthenogenesis but the fact that with over fishing occurring and a decline in shark populations the females can possibly start increasing their numbers by undergoing this process. The downside though, when they undergo normal sexual reproduction they give birth to a litter of pups but when they undergo 'virgin birth' they only produce a single pup. This discovery does raise many more questions and studies are being conducted but one thing is sure, this 'virgin birth' has definitely shed a little light on the growing problem of sharks population downfall.