Parthenogenesis in snakes? No real amount of serious discussion in /r/science, so I'm bringing it here.

Half-way through the article, it eventually gets to the point. I'll try to tl;dr as best I can:

• Female snake has litter of snakes via parthenogenesis.
• Snakes have two sex chromosomes, Z and W. ZZ = male, ZW = female.
• Parthenogenesized(?) offspring of ZW snake produced snakes with WW sex chromosomes, and unique (caramel) coloration from a recessive gene.

The article mentions that there's no real clear reason why the snake may not be utilizing male snakes for offspring, even though there are male snakes present, so I'm curious. Is there anyone here with ideas?

Does the female snake essentially decide that there are no males of worth and produces her own offspring to maybe mix up the gene pool? If she produces a ton of WW snakes, if these are capable of mating (in which case, why waste energy producing a whole litter), will they improve the gene pool as they mate with other males? If a bunch of WW snakes are running around, and males are ZZ, it seems that this will make it much less likely for males to be produced in this generation, because further offspring will not have the possibility of inheriting a Z chromosome from their mothers.

I'm no geneticist, but I just wondered. So, have at it, r/AskScience. Glad you exist for things like this. :)