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While true, as a mother and environmental studies major, that wasn't the most important detail to me. A. Human women become chimeras when they carry a fetus.
by DoreenMichele 4y ago
While true, as a mother and environmental studies major, that wasn't the most important detail to me.
A. Human women become chimeras when they carry a fetus.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155153
B. It's the reason for the headline -- their weird chimeric males -- but it seems more important to me that it facilitates invasive behavior by allowing a single ant to start a new colony.
YMMV, of course, and probably will.
- Brian_K_White 4y agoDon't lots of species store sperm? I see nothing too remarkable about a single individual being able to start a colony unless no species do store sperm.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 4y agoI have asked around. It appears you are correct.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoThere are other known ways of one individual being able to start a new population: - The simplest and most obvious way to do this is to be a clonal organism. - But you can go more complicated than that. You can have a female parthenogenetically give birth to males and then mate with those males. Aphids do this. (Actually, some cursory research suggests that aphids are more likely to give parthenogenetic birth to a batch of sons and daughters who then mate with each other?)
- ovi256 4y agoThat species from other families do it does not make it less remarkable that these are the only ant species to do it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- downvotetruth 4y agoBy that (fetomaternal) microchimerism standard all human children are chimeras when they are born. The features of (fetomaternal) microchimerism would be better defined in the temporal dimension as a temporary genotype addition with respect to the lifespan of an organism.