“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.”<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll learn when you read this story:<\/p>\n
The Iberian harvester ant produces offspring from two distinct species.<\/p>\n
Somehow, queen ants can mate with males of another species and clone them, producing eggs from another species entirely.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s quite complex how this all works together.<\/p>\n
The complex world of the animal kingdom<\/a> just got a lot wilder. with new research showing the Iberian harvester queen ant is capable of \u201claying individuals from two distinct species.\u201d<\/p>\n Yeah, you read that right. One ant\u2014two species<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a new study\u2014led by biologist Jonathan Romiguier from the University of Montpellier and published<\/a> in Nature\u2014the research team showed just how Messor ibericus makes it all happen.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this life cycle, the females must clone<\/a> males of another species because they require their sperm to produce the worker caste,\u201d the authors wrote. \u201cAs a result, males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over five million years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n This process\u2014the team dubs it \u201cxenoparous,\u201d meaning that an organism<\/a> gives birth to another species as part of its life cycle\u2014is a \u201cnatural case of cross-species cloning, resulting in the maintenance of a male-only lineage cloned through distinct species\u2019 ova.\u201d<\/p>\n Colony insects already represent a very high level of complexity. A queen functionally designs the makeup of a colony through her reproductive process. By fertilizing only some eggs<\/a> as she lays them, she can produce sterile female workers (from the fertilized eggs), other potential future queens (also from fertilized eggs, if they are given enough protein as larvae), and male ants (from the unfertilized eggs). Female ants are diploid, meaning that they have two sets of chromosomes, while males only have one set, which is how unfertilized eggs from a female can create male offspring.<\/p>\n But what\u2019s strange (or, stranger)\u2014and drew the research team to M. ibericus in the first place\u2014is that some of the workers are hybrids, and also possess DNA<\/a> from the species M. structor. This would have been reasonably understandable\u2014interspecies mating isn\u2019t unheard of, and ants (including M. ibericus) are known to make use of the process\u2014were it not for the fact that the closest M. structor colonies were more than 400 miles away. There should have been no way for the queen to have access to M. structor DNA in order to create hybrid offspring.<\/p>\n In the research, the team mined 50 nests in France, collecting 132 males from 26 different M. ibercius colonies. Half of them not only looked like M. structor ants, but posessed the nuclear genomes<\/a> of M. structor and the mitochondria of M. ibercius, indicating that the largely-genetically-M. structor males were hatched from M. ibercius queens.<\/p>\n That led researchers to conclude the M. ibericus queens are cloning M. structor males. The sperm is allowed to permeate the egg, but before full fertilization, the egg\u2019s own genetic material is eliminated to keep the egg unfertilized. The theory is that M. ibericus queens clone M. structor males to have a supply of sperm<\/a>, then mate with the clones to create hybrids that function as workers within the colony.<\/p>\n The biological details remain spotty, and even though ants are known to have cloning abilities, it\u2019s never been seen to involve two different species.<\/p>\n Michael Goodisman, an evolutionary biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who wasn\u2019t involved in the new study, told<\/a> Science that the finding \u201cis almost impossible to believe and pushes our understanding of evolutionary biology<\/a>. Just when you think you\u2019ve seen it all, social insects reveal another surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n You Might Also Like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.” Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,78498,78497,78501,78502,78500,66,78499,78503],"class_list":["post-147268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-distinct-species","tag-fertilized-eggs","tag-harvester-ant","tag-queen-ants","tag-research-team","tag-science","tag-unfertilized-eggs","tag-university-of-montpellier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}