3 ms·

European ant is the first known animal to clone members of another species

128 points by zdw 1y ago

apexalpha 1y ago
And they say there’s no innovation in Europe!
- apexalpha 1y ago
  On a serious note: this is a very interesting read, thanks for sharing.
cantor_S_drug 1y ago
For those who prefer video version : The Ants That Broke Biology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O4_AwWpfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O4_AwWpfI
p0w3n3d 1y ago
Has some infested terran vibes
- M95D 1y ago
  That's Cordyceps/Ophiocordyceps.
commandersaki 1y ago
Chimera Ant Arc?
- michaelscott 1y ago
  It's telling that my first reaction to this was fear. We watch the same shows
hunglee2 1y ago
a rather stunning reminder that all taxonomies are cultural products, useful conceptually but not inviolable
komali2 1y ago
The article personifies things a couple times and I always wonder about the actual mechanics when people do that. It mentions selfish queen genes and how the DNA from the male of the species "ensures its propagation by applying pressure to larvae to be queens rather than infertile females." Does it then? The DNA is there in the egg whispering, "do it, cheat, you'd be an amazing queen, doooo itt"? They write that the queen must use sperm from another species that it has stored to circumvent that. So the queen is thinking, "ah, pesky sneaky DNA, cheating. Here, I'll just let out, from my sperm storage organ where I store a bunch of sperm all mixed up, only sperm from another species, that'll teach that pesky DNA!" Like what is actually happening in reality?
- sitharus 1y ago
  The article uses terms that are known to biologists which can be easily searched for. There are genes called "selfish genes" which cause a negative impact on the organism. Normally they would be selected out by evolution, but the "selfish" part means the gene is propagated to descendant organisms far more often than a regular gene would be. There are several mechanisms that can cause this, wikipedia has a summary. In this case the ants have a "selfish gene" which greatly increases the probability of an egg being a queen, which makes it much harder for the colony to thrive. As for the mixing of the species? You'd need a time travel machine to find out for sure, but the researchers noted that the species live in proximity and do mate together when in the same area. This would allow the queen to produce the needed workers. Evolution drove forward and somehow created a mechanism that allowed the ants to maintain the DNA required independent from the origin species. That's what the researchers are looking for now.
dlcarrier 1y ago
…suggesting we need to rethink our understanding of species barriers. Have we ever really defined species barriers? It seems to be driven more by tradition than anything else. The vagueries of speciation has been especially exploitable by the conservatism/YIMBYism movement, where a trait common in one region but uncommon in others can be used to declare a common unthreatened animal as an endangered species, despite a lack of genetic divergence. It would be like declaring uncommonly red-haired Irish as not just an ethnicity but a separate species. My favorite example of vagueries in species differentiation is a study that found only 13 genes that reliably differ between domestic cats and European and Near Eastern wildcats. (https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1410083111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1410083111) It really brings into question what domestication even is, considering that housecats are perfectly capable of supporting themselves outside of areas inhabited by humans. Their lack of differentiation from wildcats means that they can easily become invasive species in areas where they are introduced by humans. It's impossible for a species to be invasive to its native land, but Poland has managed to simultaneously consider a group of animals with a mere bakers dozen of genes differentiating them, none of which hinder their ability to interbreed, as both "currently threatened with extinction in their natural habitat" (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6749728/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6749728/) and an "invasive alien species" (https://apnews.com/article/science-poland-wildlife-cats-birds-b942a55135832d085375de73c9cc2e23 https://apnews.com/article/science-poland-wildlife-cats-bird...).
- torben-friis 1y ago
  This question is not directed at your example specifically: is there something beyond genetics that can make a species? My reasoning is: I’ve seen animals lose some of their species’ behavior when separated from their parents too early (for puppies and kittens). They end up missing behaviors and abilities that seem to be passed generationally rather than innate. If this is the case, isn’t there something lost when a species is only kept alive domesticated or in zoos? Even if later reintroduced to the wild.
  - melagonster 1y ago
    There are some examples in insects. They display courtship behavior at different moments in a day; this is good enough to make these two groups of flies/mosquitoes (I forget which one) do not mate with each other. If there are not more accidents, the mating will gradually become impossible in the future.
giorgioz 1y ago
I've always seen it from this perspective: If two animals can mate and produce an offspring that it will also be able to reproduce and be fertile than they are member of the same species. This is condition is sufficient but not necessary. (ex a donkey and a horse can mate but will produce a mule which is sterile and so in my classification donkeys and horses are not anymore the same species). So given the cloned male ants in turn mate with the queen they were all along the same species.
- Miraltar 1y ago
  This is different, the queens mate with two different types of males. Ibericus to produce new fertile queens and structor to produce infertile workers.
- WithinReason 1y ago
  mules are not always sterile
  - ochrist 1y ago
    Also, mules are the result of a male donkey and a female horse. The other version (male horse and female donkey) is called a hinny in English. They have different characteristics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinny
seszett 1y ago
Interesting, I suppose it can work because male hymenopterans (ants, bees and wasps) are haploid, so the queen doesn't need two copies of the "foreign" genes to produce a male of the other species but just one copy, the one that she coincidentally got from a male from this foreign species. So the female can produce a male from another species without worrying about incompatibility with her own genes (apart from mitochondria). However it does mean that the male clone has to develop directly from a sperm cell from its father (and the mitochondria from the ant queen) rather than an ovum, or am I wrong?
- yorwba 1y ago
  The paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w says: Embryos devoid of maternal DNA have been observed in other groups, with the fertilization of non-nucleate ovules or the elimination of the maternal genome after fertilization. So the ovum is probably still involved, just without its own nuclear DNA (except when producing diploid workers).
abrookewood 1y ago
Why couldn't it be that the Queen had stored sperm from Males of both species?
- twnettytwo 1y ago
  Not a biologist but IIRC, male ants develop from unfertilized eggs (and are 'haploid'), and the sperm has no role in the production of male ants. Any fertilized egg produces a female ant. This would proably mean that the queen has means to produce two kinds of eggs, which is quite interesting.
  - mr_toad 1y ago
    Yes, but normally those males are genetic clones of the mother, and couldn’t be a different species.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ginko 1y ago
Wouldn't the first known animal to clone members of another species be humans?
- apexalpha 1y ago
  In most contexts humans are seprate from animals.
- Jgoauh 1y ago
  In that case the article refers to the ant birthing members of another species, the word 'clone' is a bit weird here, but it is totally different from humands cloning cows, as the cloned cow is still birthed by a cow. The other species 'cloned' by the and is not a cloned individual, just another member of that species, but birthed by another, i suppose "researchers discover xenoparity in hairy ants" isn't very good science communication
  - tsimionescu 1y ago
    The males of the other species birthed by the queen are genetic clones of the male that impreganted the queen, the DNA in the eggs is not a mix of the queen's DNA and the father's DNA, it's an exact copy (minus any mutations) of the father's DNA. So yes, it is exactly a clone, and not a regular new individual.
- rnhmjoj 1y ago
  I'd wager these ants have been doing it for longer than humans have, unless they somehow only started this in the 90s.
metalman 1y ago
alternate title, Ant break the definition of species. They also challenge the definition of cloning, and push forward the concept that our future is not goverened by technology so much as biology. Ants have been at this much longer than we have, and along with termites show a wide range of skills and abilities to survive that achive outcomes similar to our technologys, but until now were limited to specific behaviors and adaptations in indivdual species.And perhaps what we call "castes" in ants and termites are the result of species comingling and "cloning"

128 points by zdw 1y ago

apexalpha 1y ago

And they say there’s no innovation in Europe!

apexalpha 1y ago
On a serious note: this is a very interesting read, thanks for sharing.

cantor_S_drug 1y ago

For those who prefer video version : The Ants That Broke Biology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O4_AwWpfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O4_AwWpfI

p0w3n3d 1y ago

Has some infested terran vibes

M95D 1y ago
That's Cordyceps/Ophiocordyceps.

commandersaki 1y ago

Chimera Ant Arc?

michaelscott 1y ago
It's telling that my first reaction to this was fear. We watch the same shows

hunglee2 1y ago

a rather stunning reminder that all taxonomies are cultural products, useful conceptually but not inviolable

komali2 1y ago

The article personifies things a couple times and I always wonder about the actual mechanics when people do that. It mentions selfish queen genes and how the DNA from the male of the species "ensures its propagation by applying pressure to larvae to be queens rather than infertile females." Does it then? The DNA is there in the egg whispering, "do it, cheat, you'd be an amazing queen, doooo itt"? They write that the queen must use sperm from another species that it has stored to circumvent that. So the queen is thinking, "ah, pesky sneaky DNA, cheating. Here, I'll just let out, from my sperm storage organ where I store a bunch of sperm all mixed up, only sperm from another species, that'll teach that pesky DNA!" Like what is actually happening in reality?

sitharus 1y ago
The article uses terms that are known to biologists which can be easily searched for. There are genes called "selfish genes" which cause a negative impact on the organism. Normally they would be selected out by evolution, but the "selfish" part means the gene is propagated to descendant organisms far more often than a regular gene would be. There are several mechanisms that can cause this, wikipedia has a summary. In this case the ants have a "selfish gene" which greatly increases the probability of an egg being a queen, which makes it much harder for the colony to thrive. As for the mixing of the species? You'd need a time travel machine to find out for sure, but the researchers noted that the species live in proximity and do mate together when in the same area. This would allow the queen to produce the needed workers. Evolution drove forward and somehow created a mechanism that allowed the ants to maintain the DNA required independent from the origin species. That's what the researchers are looking for now.

dlcarrier 1y ago

…suggesting we need to rethink our understanding of species barriers. Have we ever really defined species barriers? It seems to be driven more by tradition than anything else. The vagueries of speciation has been especially exploitable by the conservatism/YIMBYism movement, where a trait common in one region but uncommon in others can be used to declare a common unthreatened animal as an endangered species, despite a lack of genetic divergence. It would be like declaring uncommonly red-haired Irish as not just an ethnicity but a separate species. My favorite example of vagueries in species differentiation is a study that found only 13 genes that reliably differ between domestic cats and European and Near Eastern wildcats. (https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1410083111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1410083111) It really brings into question what domestication even is, considering that housecats are perfectly capable of supporting themselves outside of areas inhabited by humans. Their lack of differentiation from wildcats means that they can easily become invasive species in areas where they are introduced by humans. It's impossible for a species to be invasive to its native land, but Poland has managed to simultaneously consider a group of animals with a mere bakers dozen of genes differentiating them, none of which hinder their ability to interbreed, as both "currently threatened with extinction in their natural habitat" (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6749728/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6749728/) and an "invasive alien species" (https://apnews.com/article/science-poland-wildlife-cats-birds-b942a55135832d085375de73c9cc2e23 https://apnews.com/article/science-poland-wildlife-cats-bird...).

torben-friis 1y ago
This question is not directed at your example specifically: is there something beyond genetics that can make a species? My reasoning is: I’ve seen animals lose some of their species’ behavior when separated from their parents too early (for puppies and kittens). They end up missing behaviors and abilities that seem to be passed generationally rather than innate. If this is the case, isn’t there something lost when a species is only kept alive domesticated or in zoos? Even if later reintroduced to the wild.
- melagonster 1y ago
  There are some examples in insects. They display courtship behavior at different moments in a day; this is good enough to make these two groups of flies/mosquitoes (I forget which one) do not mate with each other. If there are not more accidents, the mating will gradually become impossible in the future.

giorgioz 1y ago

I've always seen it from this perspective: If two animals can mate and produce an offspring that it will also be able to reproduce and be fertile than they are member of the same species. This is condition is sufficient but not necessary. (ex a donkey and a horse can mate but will produce a mule which is sterile and so in my classification donkeys and horses are not anymore the same species). So given the cloned male ants in turn mate with the queen they were all along the same species.

Miraltar 1y ago
This is different, the queens mate with two different types of males. Ibericus to produce new fertile queens and structor to produce infertile workers.
WithinReason 1y ago
mules are not always sterile
- ochrist 1y ago
  Also, mules are the result of a male donkey and a female horse. The other version (male horse and female donkey) is called a hinny in English. They have different characteristics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinny

seszett 1y ago

Interesting, I suppose it can work because male hymenopterans (ants, bees and wasps) are haploid, so the queen doesn't need two copies of the "foreign" genes to produce a male of the other species but just one copy, the one that she coincidentally got from a male from this foreign species. So the female can produce a male from another species without worrying about incompatibility with her own genes (apart from mitochondria). However it does mean that the male clone has to develop directly from a sperm cell from its father (and the mitochondria from the ant queen) rather than an ovum, or am I wrong?

yorwba 1y ago
The paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w says: Embryos devoid of maternal DNA have been observed in other groups, with the fertilization of non-nucleate ovules or the elimination of the maternal genome after fertilization. So the ovum is probably still involved, just without its own nuclear DNA (except when producing diploid workers).

abrookewood 1y ago

Why couldn't it be that the Queen had stored sperm from Males of both species?

twnettytwo 1y ago
Not a biologist but IIRC, male ants develop from unfertilized eggs (and are 'haploid'), and the sperm has no role in the production of male ants. Any fertilized egg produces a female ant. This would proably mean that the queen has means to produce two kinds of eggs, which is quite interesting.
- mr_toad 1y ago
  Yes, but normally those males are genetic clones of the mother, and couldn’t be a different species.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

ginko 1y ago

Wouldn't the first known animal to clone members of another species be humans?

apexalpha 1y ago
In most contexts humans are seprate from animals.
Jgoauh 1y ago
In that case the article refers to the ant birthing members of another species, the word 'clone' is a bit weird here, but it is totally different from humands cloning cows, as the cloned cow is still birthed by a cow. The other species 'cloned' by the and is not a cloned individual, just another member of that species, but birthed by another, i suppose "researchers discover xenoparity in hairy ants" isn't very good science communication
- tsimionescu 1y ago
  The males of the other species birthed by the queen are genetic clones of the male that impreganted the queen, the DNA in the eggs is not a mix of the queen's DNA and the father's DNA, it's an exact copy (minus any mutations) of the father's DNA. So yes, it is exactly a clone, and not a regular new individual.
rnhmjoj 1y ago
I'd wager these ants have been doing it for longer than humans have, unless they somehow only started this in the 90s.

metalman 1y ago

alternate title, Ant break the definition of species. They also challenge the definition of cloning, and push forward the concept that our future is not goverened by technology so much as biology. Ants have been at this much longer than we have, and along with termites show a wide range of skills and abilities to survive that achive outcomes similar to our technologys, but until now were limited to specific behaviors and adaptations in indivdual species.And perhaps what we call "castes" in ants and termites are the result of species comingling and "cloning"