Jonathan Romiguier

The strangest ant reproduction yet 🐜

Some Messor ants make workers that are hybrids of two species, ensuring a stable workforce when environment cues fail.
Learn more with @selfishmeme.bsky.social in our FREE Brad Ashby Memorial Lecture (29 Jan 2026).

Register: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1970355572...

New @royentsoc.bsky.social #ResearchHighlight available!

Recent work by Juvé et al. in #RESSystematicEnt reveals the evolutionary history of Messor harvester ants, a genus adapted to arid environments & with some of the most complex reproductive systems known so far.

Read more ⬇️
buff.ly/xGeFrKr

Des fourmis peuvent donner naissance à des fourmis… d’une autre espèce Coup de pied dans la fourmilière du vivant : une étude conduite à Montpellier montre qu’une même fourmi peut donner naissance à des individus de deux espèces différentes. C’est la xénoparité, qui s’a…

Passionnante découverte : une étude conduite à Montpellier montre qu’une même fourmi peut donner naissance à des individus de deux espèces différentes. C’est la xénoparité, qui s’ajoute à la grande diversité des modes de reproduction chez ces insectes. www.mediapart.fr/journal/ecol...

This work benefited from the support of the @erc.europa.eu grant RoyalMess, hosted by @cnrs.fr , @isemevol.bsky.social and @umontpellier.bsky.social.
Article freely available here for more details: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#Xenoparity shows how sexual parasitism can evolve to a self-sufficient unit of selection, where two species bind their lifecycles. Question: When two species sexually depend on each other and are produced by the same colonies, how should we consider the resulting superorganism?

This reveals a new reproductive mode: #xenoparity —"giving birth to alien species". By becoming xenoparous, M. ibericus queens allowed themselves to expand their range, cloning M. structor males in their colonies and invading Southern Europe with hybrid workers.

⚠️Wilder: workers have two father types - wild males (from M. structor nests) or clones (only in M. ibericus nests). This suggests that queens domesticated M. structor males by cloning them from the wild. Fun detail: clonal vs. wild males look different, like pigs vs. boars🐗→🐷!

🔬Other key result: this queen's spermatheca contains sperm from both species. For cross-species cloning to occur, this means that maternal DNA in the ova has been fully replaced by M. structor DNA stored in the spermatheca #androgenesis.

Lab evidences now 🧪:
🥚When isolating M. ibericus queens in the lab, we found that ~10% of their eggs carried ONLY M. structor nuclear DNA.
🔎Even better: after monitoring ~50 colonies in the lab during 18 months, we observed male adults of both species laid by a single queen.

🔍 How did we reach this odd conclusion? Field evidences first: we found M. structor males within 26 M. ibericus colonies (11 populations). All have:
✅100% M. structor nuclear genome.
✳️Mitochondria matching the M. ibericus queens of the colony, suggesting they're their mothers.

💡To ensure a sperm supply to mass-produce their hybrid workers, we found that M. ibericus queens clone M. structor males.
➡️Result? Males from the same mother have distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago.

🧬Sequencing 390 ant genomes (5 species) shows that Messor ibericus queens depend on M. structor sperm to produce all their workers.
⚠️Problem: these hybrid workers invaded southern Europe, while M. structor colonies are missing. How's possible? Where do the fathers come from?

Messor harvester ants dominate Southern Europe by collecting seeds, turning them into "ant bread"🥖.
But this is not the coolest thing about them: in some species, queens are sperm parasites, as they rely on sperm from other species to produce their workers.

Cross-species cloning in ants 🐜
These two males belong to different species—but share the same mother. How? Why?
To celebrate the print release of our last paper in this week’s @nature.com (issue 8084), here’s a thread summarizing the results. Why? Let’s dive in🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thanks for noticing it, here's a link for the raw data available in NCBI: trace.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/?view...

The #OpenAccess #EditorsChoice article for the issue reports on the #phylogenomics of Messor harvester #ants (Hymenoptera: #Formicidae: Stenammini), and unravels their biogeographical origin and #diversification patterns.

Why not give it a read?
doi.org/10.1111/syen.12693

@selfishmeme.bsky.social

Chez les fourmis moissoneuses, des reines enfantent des mâles d’une autre espèce Une nouvelle étude révèle un phénomène inédit dans le règne animal : certaines reines donnent naissance à des mâles d’une autre espèce. Ce mécanisme appelé « xénoparité » permet à leurs colonies de su...

🐜 Une nouvelle étude révèle un phénomène inédit dans le règne animal : certaines reines donnent naissance à des mâles d’une autre espèce. Ce mécanisme appelé « xénoparité » permet à leurs colonies de survivre.

Explications avec des GIF de fourmis ⬇️

These Ants Found a Loophole for a Fundamental Rule of Life

Thanks to @cjgiaimo.bsky.social for this nice article in @nytimes.com (www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/s...) about our last study (www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

Genomic signatures indicate biodiversity loss in an endemic island ant fauna Insect populations have declined worldwide, but the extent and drivers of these declines are debated. Most studies rely on field surveys performed in the past century, leaving gaps in our understandin...

A new Science study of ants in Fiji—involving genomic sequencing of over 4000 ant specimens from museum collections—shows that most native species have been in decline since humans first arrived in the archipelago 3000 years ago. https://scim.ag/489mI2o

This is one of the most accurate coverage of the study I’ve seen (including written articles), it really deserves to be shared with both scientists and non-scientists!

YouTube video by 7 Days of Science The Ants That Broke Biology

If you’ve heard about our study on ants producing two different species but are still confused about how it works (and don’t have time to read the paper), this 10-minute video made by @bengthomas.bsky.social is very informative:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O4...

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Comic. [Building with large sign in front of it[ SIGN: Welcome to the *Biology Department* It has been [changeable sign: 3] days since we discovered something existentially horrifying about bugs that makes you question your whole reality

Biology Department

xkcd.com/3140/

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

Oh wow, I need to know now.

Line drawing of a two story institutional building with a sign in front, "Welcome to the BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT. It has been 3 days since we discovered something existentially horrifying about abugs that make you question your whole reality."

The new XKCD has to be a reference to the ant paper where ants just casually lay eggs of a different species, yes? Maybe? There are so many weird bugs its hard to know.

I drove myself crazy picking citations for this sentence. After spending a whole night hunting for which Greek philosopher might have said it first, I realized I didn’t want to spend another night figuring out how to format an Aristotle citation to comply with Nature’s guidelines.

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 moth...

You may have missed this #ant poster at #ESEB2025, but be sure not to miss the article just published in #openacess in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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 moth...

The actual research article is #openaccess and free to read here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

Be sure to check Poster number 100 with Alice Ha at #ESEB2025 if you fancy crazy reproductive systems