Many species of Thysanoptera are known to be habitually parthenogenetic. The eggs are laid on the food-plant, those females possessed of an ovipositor cutting through the epidermis and placing their eggs singly within the plant-tissues; a single female may take five or six weeks to deposit all her eggs.
The worm inhabits the lung of the frog and toad, and is hermaphrodite (Schneider) or parthenogenetic (Leuckart); the embryos hatched from the eggs find their way through the lungs into the alimentary canal and thence to the exterior; in a few days they develop into a sexual larva, called a Rhabditiform larva, in which the sexes are distinct; the eggs remain within the uterus, and the young when hatched break through its walls and live free in the perivisceral cavity of the mother, devouring the organs of the body until only the outer cuticle is left; this eventually breaks and sets free the young, which are without teeth, and have therefore lost the typical Rhabditis form.
It appears that in parthenogenetic eggs two polar nuclei are formed.
Doncaster (1906-1907) on the eggs of sawflies, the number of chromosomes is not reduced in parthenogenetic egg-nuclei, while, in eggs capable of fertilization, the usual reduction-divisions occur.
Cases of parthenogenetic reproduction, or reproduction without the intervention of the male, have been recorded in the case of two genera (Filistata and Tegenaria), and may be commoner than is usually supposed.