2025/09/03 by Yannick Juvé, Célia Lutrat, Ainhi D. Ha +15 · 4 voices · 12 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior #Plant and animal studies #Plant Reproductive Biology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09425-w
Abstract Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring 1,2 . 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 3 that evolved into a natural case of cross-species cloning 4,5 , 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.