“Messor ibericus”, the ant that lays eggs of two different species
In the Iberian harvester ant, the queen can mate with males of another species to create her workers, and with those of her own species to create new queens. Alone, she produces a new generation of males of each of these two species.
“Reproduction is bizarre in many social insects, but the Iberian harvester ant ( Messor ibericus ) takes bizarreness to the extreme,” notes the American journal Science . The queen can mate with males of her own species as well as those of another species, Messor structor ; Above all, it can lay eggs from which either M. ibericus males or M. structor males – with completely distinct genomes and morphologies – will emerge, even when there are no M. structor colonies nearby.
In other words, M. ibericus queens are able to clone M. structor males to ensure their own survival. This discovery is described in Nature on September 3.
“The fact that the queen produces two types of males, one of her own species, the other of another species, is something astonishing, to say the least,” comments Francisco Martín, a biologist at the Autonomous University of Madrid, who was not involved in the work, in El País . This discovery “is almost inconceivable and revolutionizes our understanding of evolutionary biology,” adds Michael Goodisman, a biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, who was also not involved in the study, in Science .
“These two species diverged five thousand years ago
Take advantage of the special digital offer to access all of our content without limits.
Courrier International
