This is going to get us a lot of interesting data to test various hypotheses re: why sexually reproduce at all? Since parthenogenesis seems to remain an option for such a wide range of animals, and your clone gets 100% of your genes into the next generation (as opposed to a paltry 50% with sex) why aren't more animals taking advantage of parthenogenesis?

P.S. - I hope Saletan was kidding with his "mechanism for avoiding extinction". That's about as plausible as group selection. A complex adaptation does not appear, nor does it maintain itself, against the day when it might EVENTUALLY be useful for avoiding some species-level extinction event.