These ants clone another species in a strange tale of survival

Researchers have revealed an unusual survival strategy that converts basic biology into the Iberian Harvister ants: queens can produce eggs that turn into two different types of ant species.

A team has revealed this strange reproduction feature while trying to solve the mystery of a missing ant species. The preliminary data seemed to show that the Iberian class of ants or the Messor of Ibericus, in the Mediterranean region of Ibericus, reproduced with another type of Harvester ants called messor maker, creating hybrid workers ants.

But there was a problem. Jonathan Romiguier, a senior researcher at the University of Montpellier, France and published in the journal on September 3, said, Jonathan Romiguier, the Italian Island, with the Iberian Harverine Ant Colony, is about 1,000 kilometers away from the most well -known Messor -making population (621 miles). Nature Detailing the reproductive method of Messor Ibericus.

“We had a strong doubt that something was very unusual about this kind, but to be honest, we were far from imagining how unusual it was,” Romiguier said. “This paradox that caused us to investigate the case better.”

In Europe, more than 120 ant populations examining, hundreds of ant genomes and laboratory experiments for five years, the team watched two different types of ant from the egg laid by a single queen.

As the researchers discovered, the eggs of İberian Harvester Queens are developing differently depending on the Queen’s need for spouses to produce the future İberian Harvester Ant Queens, or a hybrid labor force that constitutes 99% of the colony.

The findings change the way scientists understand the ant breeding, which shows that ants can produce individuals as part of the life cycles.

Two ants species are separated

Jessica Purcell, an assistant professor at the Department of Entomology at California, Riverside, encountered Iber Basatist ants while examining other types of ant species in Italy. Purcell was not involved in new work, but a article Accompanying the research.

“Design ants collect seeds from various plants and bring them back to their colonies,” he said. “Many species of plants close to the entrances of the nest clips, so that they have apartments that do not contain vegetation around their nests, and then there may be intense or unusual vegetation beyond this limit. This produces a distinctive appearance outside the nests.”

According to the research authors, Messor Ibericus and Messor maker belonged to the same species once separated 5 million years ago. Even after division, two species lived in the same geographical field in Europe. In some parts of the continent, such as Eastern France, species still live close to each other.

At some point, Iber Harveri Ant Queens, probably for a few million years early, lost his ability to produce his own workers’ ants. Researchers have not yet revealed that this was the cause, but the queen has led to the matching of the nearby messy -making ants to create a workforce that was hybrid of two species.

Romiguier wrote in an e-mail, “We doubt that it was caused by an evolutionary conflict between queens and larvae, where a ‘selfish’ genetic element entertains the development of larvae towards becoming queen to ensure the transmission of future generations (although workers are largely sterile because Queens increases).

İberian harvest ants were later dependent on a messer -making ants to survive, and forced their queens to watch men of another species known as sperm parasitism.

Instead of dealing with such a time -consuming boredom, İberian Harvester ants turned to another reproductive strategy: working writers cloning the sperm of the messor -maker ants, a phenomenon called sexual marriage. Scientists have not yet observed this practice in another animal.

Romiguier said, “Humanity, like pets, had control over the reproduction of these men, which they once exploited in the wild nature,” Romiguier said. “Men’s domestication was possible with only sperm with a man’s cloning capabilities of another kind of cloning.”

Throughout the generations, Iber design ants have caused a descendants of the male messor -made ants in the nests of the nests, eliminate the need to live in the same geographical field as another species, and millions of invading hybrids ants to build colonies along the Mediterranean Sea.

Iberian Harvester ants are examples of a new reproductive mode called Xsenoparous, Xeno – “foreign, strange or different” and “produce, emerge, give birth”.

Romiguier said, “Over the ants, this for the first time shows the evolution of xenoparlik, which needs to spread the genome of another species with their own eggs,” Romiguier said.

A genetic surprise

The sequence of the ants’s genome allowed researchers to determine that the only “pure” iberian tasatist ants were queens and men who could match future Queens. The other Iberian ant egg eggs fertilized with Messor maker sperm resulted in hybrid female workers.

When the researchers investigated how the Iberian design queen ants could produce messoring ants, they discovered that the queens cloned the genetic material of the man from sperm stored in their own bodies. Somehow, the queen can delete its own nuclear DNA and produce pups almost entirely based on sperm DNA.

However, these men appear different from the Messor -made Queens of Messor Makes, and according to the study, although the genetic material is less than 0.01%, they have mitochondria containing Ibericus DNA.

Romiguier said that clone puppies are accepted as real clones because they are close to their fathers.

More than millions of generations, a clone genome can accumulate some mutations and may vary more than the original first clone over time.

“It is widely accepted that cloning refers to a copy of the nuclear genome,” he said.

Two species from a mother

The team held the colonies of Iberian harveri ants in artificial nests in the laboratory. After watching them for two years, the researchers directly observed the birth of two types of male species with different genomes from a single queen.

Two puppy messor -maker male hairless, three messor Ibericus were covered with male hair. Hair in ants is one of the criteria that helps differentiate species.

In the future, the team plans to investigate the full cellular mechanism, which causes the cross -species of Iberian Harvester Queens to clone.

Romiguier, “Currently, the mother’s genetic material is removed from the ovum at some point and we know that the foreign man in the embryo has left the genetic material,” he said. “However, we still don’t know exactly how or when this mother genetic material is eliminated.”

Understanding the natural cloning process in ants, he said he could provide insight for scientists who try to artificially induce cloning in other species.

He is a professor of ecology and evolution at the Department of Biology at the Danish Copenhagen University. Jacobus J. Boomsma, hybrid puppies and androgenesis or genetic material only the reproduction of men from other ants, while the combination of both in this ant, said both the combination of both. Boomsma did not participate in the new study.

Boomsma said that any feature of ants developed by the natural selection, and that faser hybrid workers allow competitive advantage, allowing Iber Harvester ants to largely expand their range.

In a E -Post, Boomsma, “And then, Messor Ibericus Queens, spreading in a way that the natural men of the Messor maker cannot reach, these foreign men developed to clonize under their vapors,” he wrote. “It stabilized the system, but at the expense of losing most genetic variation. In the long term (a few million years), this ant will probably run out of lineage (almost all asxual species).”

Purcell called the Discovery novel, although the ants already known and unusual mating systems, the Iberian class of the ants are among the weirdest of the ants and said that it offers more mystery that has not yet been understood.

Purcell wrote with an e -mail, “The woman’s reproductive system and the extent to which the queen can control the result for each egg (for example, a fertilized egg will be a worker or will it be liquidated to produce a man’s genetic code?) “I really can’t wait to see that Jonathan Romiguier and his team will be suitable for the next stage!”

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