{"id":17,"date":"2025-09-04T19:54:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T19:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/?p=17"},"modified":"2025-09-04T19:54:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T19:54:15","slug":"mind-blowing-ants-offspring-are-two-different-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/?p=17","title":{"rendered":"Mind-blowing: &#8220;Ants\u2019 offspring are two different species&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/2c6057c528fdc6f73fa196d9d\/images\/0733c3ba-4000-4ac2-4fec-f8e01b18363c.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"width:627px;height:auto\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Queen Iberian harvester ants (<em>Messor ibericus<\/em>) can give birth to ants of their own species (left) and, using a cloning trick, offspring of a different one (<em>Messor structor<\/em>, right).\u00a0(Jonathan Romiguier, Yannick Juv\u00e9, Laurent Soldati)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Iberian harvester ants (<em>Messor ibericus<\/em>) rely on hardy workers that are hybrids of their own species and another one, <em>Messor structor<\/em>. But the queens don\u2019t bother keeping any <em>M. structor<\/em> males around: <strong>they make their own<\/strong>. <em>M. ibericus<\/em> queens can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-025-02807-0\">lay eggs that contain only M. structor DNA in their nuclei<\/a>. They then mate with those <em>M. structor<\/em> ants to produce the hybrid workers. In effect, <em>M. ibericus<\/em> has domesticated <em>M. structor<\/em> <strong>and its genome<\/strong>, says evolutionary biologist Jonathan Romiguier, who co-authoured the research.<br><br>From the <a href=\"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/nature\/daily-briefing-13894223?e=76dfb09431\">Nature Briefing mailing list<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iberian harvester ants (Messor ibericus) rely on hardy workers that are hybrids of their own species and another one, Messor structor. But the queens don\u2019t bother keeping any M. structor males around: they make their own. M. ibericus queens can lay eggs that contain only M. structor DNA in their nuclei. They then mate with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/?p=17\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mind-blowing: &#8220;Ants\u2019 offspring are two different species&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,10,7,9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazing-animules","category-animals","category-ants","category-genetics","category-insects","category-interesting-funny-fun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23,"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/23"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniebornheimer.com\/stuff\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}