Login / Signup

Digest: Recurrent evolution of worker production by interspecific hybridization in harvester ants: Parasitism or kludge?

Scott William Roy
Published in: Evolution; international journal of organic evolution (2022)
Multiple ant lineages have evolved a bizarre system called social hybridogenesis, involving multiple co-occurring genetic lineages, in which mating between lineages produces workers but mating within a lineage produces daughter queens. A new study reveals that this system evolved multiple times within harvester ants, each time from interspecific hybridization. A third finding, that the system likely evolves in small or isolated populations, could be explained either by exploitation of heterospecific males for their sperm, or simply by failure to avoid interspecific mating.
Keyphrases
  • healthcare
  • single molecule
  • mental health
  • genome wide
  • nucleic acid
  • copy number
  • dna methylation
  • label free