These two males belong to different species—but share the same mother. How? Why? To celebrate the print release of our last paper in this week’s @nature.com (issue 8084), here’s a thread summarizing the results. Why? Let’s dive in🧵👇nature.com/articles/s41586-0…

Excited to share our new paper in @CurrentBiology 🐜 tinyurl.com/bcha65br with @eyalprivman, Pnina Cohen, Chih-Chi Lee, Zeev Frenkel, @YoannPellen @UofHaifa @GITAMUniversity Here is a brief summary:

Reproduction is strange in many social insects, but the Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) takes the weirdness to the next level. ⁠ ⁠ Queens mate with males of another species and then clone them, researchers reported last year, which means this ant is the only known organism that propagates two species by itself. Evolutionary biologist Jonathan Romiguier, who led the team, calls M. ibericus “in a sense, the most complex, colonial life form we know of so far.”⁠ ⁠ The finding “is almost impossible to believe and pushes our understanding of evolutionary biology,” says Michael Goodisman, an evolutionary biologist who was not involved with the new research. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all, social insects reveal another surprise.”⁠ ⁠ Learn more: scim.ag/4q3C9OW #ScienceMagArchives

Cette étonnante fourmi qui donne naissance à plusieurs espèces... l.lepoint.fr/f3A

AUDIO 🎧 Une espèce de fourmi défie les lois de la reproduction et du clonage l.franceinfo.fr/KMV

wrote about some weird ants (which is saying something for ants) nytimes.com/2025/09/15/scien…

An ant queen just gave birth to two different species, stunning scientists. Researchers studying Iberian harvester ants in Europe uncovered one of the strangest reproductive systems in the natural world. A single queen can lay eggs that hatch into two completely different species: her own, Messor ibericus, and another called Messor structor. The finding was especially puzzling because the colony was discovered on the Italian island of Sicily – about 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) away from the closest known population of Messor structor. Yet somehow, the queen was producing both species. Normally, each ant species keeps to its own genetic line. But millions of years ago, Iberian harvester ants lost the ability to produce their own workers. To survive, their queens began mating with Messor structor males, producing hybrid female workers that make up 99% of a colony. Later, evolution went a step further: the queens learned to clone the sperm of those males. That means a queen can now create “foreign” males from another species using only her eggs and stored sperm – a process scientists call sexual domestication. The result is astonishing. In the lab, researchers watched as one queen gave rise to both hairy Messor ibericus males and virtually hairless Messor structor males, each with distinct genomes. It’s the first known case of what scientists are calling xenoparity – reproduction that requires propagating the genome of another species through one’s own eggs.

Du génie social et génétique des fourmis: une même mère pour deux fils d’espèces différentes. Les chercheurs eux-mêmes en sont restés ébahis ⁦@NHerzberg⁩ lemonde.fr/sciences/article/…

We had an amazing story to tell, and now it's finally out! 🐜💫 Check it on Researchgate tinyurl.com/mzfw932y @Nature nature.com/articles/s41586-0…

If you thought biology couldn't get any weirder, life finds a way: "We term females exhibiting this reproductive mode as xenoparous, meaning they give birth to other species as part of their life cycle."