Today approximately 3000 species of stick insects, also known as walking sticks (Phasmatodea), are known. An interesting feature of Phasmatodea is that 10–25% of the known species are either obligatory or facultative parthenogenetic . Notably, walking sticks may present with low effective population sizes (e.g., Peruphasma schultei) . Additionally, even in tropical habitats, walking stick eggs can require several months to develop, while individual animals live on average 1–2 years . Theoretical work suggests that longer lifespans like this might be associated with higher cell turnover rates . In practice, these factors may lead either to more chromosome abnormalities per generation or a higher likelihood of fixing chromosome abnormalities even if they are slightly deleterious.