Gerhard Wingender

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same mother having distinct genomes and morphologies.

We see again, sex is more complex than we can imagine.
(References: (i) Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...; (ii) News & Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...)

… unique manner. The queens can lay eggs for males of their own species, but also for the males of the other species needed for the hybridisation. Then the queens mate with these males to produce the hybrid workers. Thus, they stole the whole genetics of these males and made it their own.

… species, and the infertile hybrids become workers. Similar to how humans cross donkeys and horses to produce mules.
Stealing sperm works well, but makes the ants dependent on the males of the other species. Scientists now realised that the Iberian harvester ant solved this problem in a truly ...

… fertilised eggs. Some ants stopped generating their own workers. Instead, they steal eggs from other colonies, which develop into workers.
Some ants developed a mix of both strategies. They still generate workers, but only from hybrids. I.e. the queens mate with males from another related ...

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same mother having distinct genomes and morphologies.

My highlight of the week:
An exception shattered a central dogma in biology: an ant species was described in which the queen can lay eggs of their own species (normal) but also for males of a different species (unique).
In bees, wasps, and most ant species, the workers of the colony derive from …