One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants | Nature

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Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Advertisement Nature (2025)Cite this article 7311 Accesses 827 Altmetric Metrics details Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring1,2. 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 parasitism3 that evolved i

Download PDF Subjects Evolutionary biology Evolutionary ecology Genetic hybridization Phylogenomics Population genetics 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 evolu

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants | Nature

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