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Living organisms are assumed to produce same-#species #offspring.
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Living organisms are assumed to produce same-#species #offspring.
But this is not the case for 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 parasitism that evolved into a natural case of cross-species cloning, resulting in the maintenance of a male-only lineage cloned through distinct species’ ova.
#biology #evolution
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w -
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