When an animal parent has a child, both will belong to the same species. Humans beget humans, combfish beget combfish, and green tinkerbirds beget green tinkerbirds. Outside of the occasional hybrid (like a mule or a wholphin), this just seems like an incontrovertible fact of biology.
It took an ant to find a way out of this seemingly airtight setup.
In a paper published earlier this month in Nature, researchers reported how queens of the Mediterranean harvester ant species Messor ibericus could produce male offspring of a different species, Messor structor. The M. ibericus ants then used the M. structor males to create hybrid workers who supported the colony.
This strategy — in which one species needs to produce offspring belonging to another species — has not been seen before in any creature. The researchers call it “xenoparity,” or “foreign birth.”
“It’s crazy,” said Jonathan Romiguier, a biologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Science at the University of Montpellier in France and an author of the paper. “Sci-fi material.”
Ant colonies are highly structured, with individual insects sticking to specific roles. In harvester ant societies, female queens create offspring, and male drones provide sperm. Sterile female workers take care of pretty much everything else, including nest building, child care, and making and distributing “ant bread,” or crushed seeds mixed with saliva.
Studying M. ibericus, Dr. Romiguier noticed something “really, really abnormal,” he said. Nearly all the workers in their colonies were first-generation hybrids — crosses between their own species and another harvester ant, M. structor.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post These Ants Found a Loophole for a Fundamental Rule of Life appeared first on New York Times.
