In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for produ
Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring. Here, we report a shift from this norm in Messor ibericus, an ant that lays individuals from two distinct species. In this life cycle, females must clone males of another species because they require their sperm to produce the worker caste. As a result, males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago. The evolutionary history of this system appears as sexual parasitism that evolved into a natural case of cross-species cloning, resulting in the maintenance of a male-only lineage cloned through distinct species’ ova. We term females exhibiting this reproductive mode as xenoparous, meaning they give birth to other species as part of their life cycle.
may I add into the fray:
Little fire ants (Wasmannia) doing something similar where the males and females are different species and there is so much sexual conflict that The females have evolved to make reproductive clone babies. The males have evolved to wipe the female dna from eggs and make reproductive clone babies. Basically, the male and female reproductive lines are operating in an entirely different evolutionary pool than the sterile workers, who are still made by mixing genes from both sexes.
An extreme case of sexual conflict has been unearthed in the little fire ant Wasmannia auropunctata. Queens produce sterile workers by sexua
And then we have a harvester ant with Genetics that are functioning as if they have at least 3 different sexes, divided amongst colonies.
Basically, we have two variants of ants and a queen needs needs to mate with the same variant as herself to produce queens and the opposite variant to produce workers. So a queen needs to have mated with both if she wants to have a healthy colony and be able to pass on her genes to future queens. And all types of colonies need to be present in a population to keep it stable.
Functionally, it can be argued to be more like FOUR operational sexes. IT IS VERY NEAT.
While making the recent BBC Radio 4 series, Sexual Nature: A Brief Natural History of Sex , I came across some research on North Ameri
Actually also also I feel like it's worth how ants (and bees and wasps) normally do genetics because it's also interesting
You know how humans and most sexually reproducing animals get half their genes from one parent and half from the other, resulting in two every gene? This is called diploid. (Diplo=2). The eggs and sperm have a half set of genes (one of each) and are called haploid.
But Ants-Bees-Wasps use a haplo-diploid system.
The females (queens and sterile workers) have two of every gene, 1 from each parent, and are diploid. But the males are born from underutilized eggs. They have 1 of every gene from their mom only, and are haploid.
This results in some complicated math about what percentage of genes each parent gets to pass on, but the net result is that females are more related to their own sisters (75%) than to their own offspring (50%). And thus, it is evolutionarily beneficial to remain in a large social group and raise sister-queens rather than go off and have your own daughters.
Also if you run out of sperm for some reason you can just start spamming out males
