cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7777980
A new study has now provided the first proof of an ant species that lacks both workers and males and consists exclusively of queens.
💅💅💅💅
Vibes say these are more ant-parasites and parasite-ants, but they’re pretty interesting regardless. I was hoping to read about a clonal super-organism, but it seems like these supplant existing ant-queens, so I presume they are less collectivist than I was hoping. Still pretty cool.
Conservatives seen sweating, drafting bills to ban them
There’s gotta be a point at which sexual reproduction comes into play, otherwise it’s an evolutionary dead end
Or an en evolutionary peak
Cloning!
Note: Typically ‘workers’ are non sexually reproducing females for ants
They then analysed the queen ants under a microscope and found that their mating structures were not used, essentially indicating that the offspring were all clones.
After observing multiple colonies and multiple populations of the species, researchers confirmed that the species completely lacked workers and males.
“Our data therefore suggest that the life history of T. kinomurai is characterised by the unique combination of workerless parasitism and parthenogenesis, i.e., the ability to produce female offspring from unfertilised eggs,” scientists wrote in the study published in the journal Current Biology.
Yeah I read it, I’m saying that if an animal is only reproducing via cloning forever, it’s an evolutionary dead end, because they will have completely lost the ability to adapt to environmental changes
No necessarily: mutations will still happen. But there will not be any genetic crossing over that will contribute to greater variance.
Somebody phone Ru Paul.
Yaass Queen!
