adult females giving birth to live young once a year or every second year. In general, males appear to reach sexual maturity at a slightly younger age and smaller size than females. As far as known, sexual maturity is reached at an age of 7–12 years in Pristis and 2–3 years in Anoxypristis. In the smalltooth and green sawfish this equals a total length of , in the largetooth sawfish at , in the dwarf sawfish about , and in the narrow sawfish at . This means that the generation length is about 4.6 years in the narrow sawfish and 14.6–17.2 years in the remaining species. Mating involves the male inserting a clasper, organs at the pelvic fins, into the female to fertilize the eggs. As known from many elasmobranchs, the mating appears to be rough, with the sawfish often sustaining lacerations from its partner's saw. However, through genetic testing it has been shown that at least the smalltooth sawfish also can reproduce by parthenogenesis where no male is involved and the offspring are clones of their mother. In Florida, United States, it appears that about 3% of the smalltooth sawfish offspring are the result of parthenogenesis. It is speculated that this may be in response to being unable to find a partner, allowing the females to reproduce anyway. The pregnancy lasts several months. There are 1–23 young in each sawfish litter, which are long at birth. In the embryos the rostrum is flexible and it only hardens shortly before birth. To protect the mother the saws of the young have a soft cover, which falls off shortly after birth. The pupping grounds are in coastal and estuarine waters. In most species the young generally stay there for the first part of their lives, occasionally moving upriver when there is an increase in salinity. The exception is the largetooth sawfish where the young move upriver into freshwater where they stay for 3–5 years, sometimes as much as from the sea. In at least the smalltooth sawfish the young show a degree of site fidelity, generally staying in the same fairly small area in the first part of their lives. In the green and dwarf sawfish there are indications that both sexes remain in the same overall region throughout their lives with little mixing between the subpopulations. In the largetooth sawfish the males appear to move more freely between the subpopulations,