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Comment by sjducb | Hacker News Reader

The original paper discusses this in more detail. There is a well understood phenomenon called sperm paratism where male sperm will take over the egg, instead of sexually reproducing with the egg.

In sexual reproduction the offspring has 50% of its genetic material from both parents. In sperm parasitism the offspring is 100% related to the male and the female’s genetic material has been destroyed.

These inbericus females are allowing the messor male line to reproduce by sperm parisitism to maintain a domesticated messor line that they can then later sexually reproduce with to create hybrid worker ants.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w

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So the messor male line is without sexual reproduction. Essentially a clone army, all with identical genes?

I find it interesting that this has not led to all the clones knocked out by diseases, as happens to eg our banana plantations.

All M. structor's aren't clones, only in that colony.

They are out their in the wild reproducing with other M. structors sexually.

I thought one of the big points was there's no M. structor females on the islands.

They've extended their range, so there's lots of cases where they don't have wild ones around, but there's still overlap, at least according to the article I read.

Yes, in some areas - but not e.g. on Sicily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O4_AwWpfI gives perhaps a better overview

M. Ibericus produces 4 kinds of offsprings.

    1. M. Ibericus queen + no male (unfertilized egg) -> M. Ibericus male.
    2. M. Ibericus queen + M. Ibericus male -> M. Ibericus queen
    3. M. Ibericus queen + M. Structor male -> M. Structor male, no genes from the mother
    4. M. Ibericus queen + M. Structor male -> M. Structor/Ibericus hybrid female, (worker ant, infertile)

The authors tried to find evidence of gene flow between the domesticated messor drones and the wild messor populations, but couldn’t. They sequenced about 100 ants, so it was not an exhaustive search. However if it was common you would have expected to see it.

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