Sand dollars

Baby sand dollars clone themselves when they sense danger

Posted by Jeff from Seattle Times

A graduate student has discovered that sand dollars have a surprising survival strategy: Faced with the threat of being gobbled up, it makes like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies and clones itself. Similarly, in Birds Do It, Bees Do It, Dragons Don't Need To, it's reported that Komodo dragons under harsh conditions clone themselves in what seem like virgin births. So why do we need males? With virgin birth, hatchlings are simply genetic duplicates of the mother. In a world of clones, there would not be enough variation for populations to adapt. Virgin birth, then, is a great stopgap measure to ensure the survival of a species, but works against it in the long haul.

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