• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Yellow Crazy Ant Chimeras Are Born Through Bizarre Reproduction Never Seen Before

April 6, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

The yellow crazy ant is a skilled invader. Like many invasive species trying to colonize new lands, it adapted to create worker ants that could up their initially tiny numbers, but now new research has discovered that they use a means of reproduction that was previously unknown to science to do it.

Male yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes) are chimeras, meaning they are single organisms made up of two populations of cells that are genetically distinct from one another. Some chimeras can be made up of three or more distinct cell groups, but the male yellow crazy ant is built with two separate genetic lineages.

Advertisement

Chimeras have been observed in many species, including humans and cats, so their existence isn’t that baffling. What makes the discovery so incredible is the volume at which yellow crazy ants are churning out their 50/50 chimera worker males, because normally chimeras are the result of developmental accidents.

Until now, science didn’t think that regular production of chimeras through a single fertilization event was possible, but the yellow crazy ant’s gone and blown that theory. This kind of obligate chimerism is therefore a new-to-science discovery, and one that may go some way to explaining why yellow crazy ants are such a successful invasive species, as only one queen is needed to carry all the genetic information that’ll keep the colony going.

Researchers first came to suspect that something strange might be going on with male yellow crazy ants when they noticed that worker ants were always heterozygous at some genetic marker loci. Haplodiploidy is a sex determination system shared by many insect species that sees the males develop from unfertilized eggs, meaning all of their cell types are the same. While yellow crazy ant males are haploid, they had heterozygosity that you wouldn’t expect to see in such organisms – which got the researchers scratching their heads.

They now know that this peculiar genetic makeup is the result of two genetic lineages named “R” and “W”. Queens hail from R and carry two copies of the same chromosome. If their eggs are fertilized by a fellow R, it makes another queen.

Advertisement

If the queen’s egg is fertilized by a W, one of two things can unfold. In one outcome, the gamete cells’ nuclei fuse, creating a diploid offspring with a lot of heterozygosity. In the other, they fail to fuse, creating a haploid chimeric male, and this is how they cook up so many chimeras that are typically very rare within a population.

Just when you think the yellow crazy ant can’t get any crazier.

The study is published in the journal Science.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Kroger expects smaller decline in same-store sales on grocery demand
  2. Libya presidency council head plans to hold October conference
  3. Tikehau Capital aims for around 5 billion euros of assets dedicated to tackling climate change
  4. Think Your Country Is Hot On Abortion Rights? Think Again

Source Link: Yellow Crazy Ant Chimeras Are Born Through Bizarre Reproduction Never Seen Before

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Massive 166-Million-Year-Old Sauropod Footprints Become The Longest Dinosaur Trackway In Europe
  • Do Spiders Dream? “After Watching Hundreds Of Spiders, There Is No Doubt In My Mind”
  • IFLScience Meets: ESA Astronaut Rosemary Coogan On Astronaut Training And The Future Of Space Exploration
  • What’s So Weird About The Methuselah Star, The Oldest We’ve Found In The Universe?
  • Why Does Red Wine Give Me A Headache? Many Scientists Blame It On The Grape Skins
  • Manta Rays Dive Way Deeper Than We Thought – Up To 1.2 Kilometers – To Explore The Seas
  • Prof Brian Cox Explains What He Finds “Remarkable” About Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Story
  • Pioneering “Pregnancy Test” Could Identify Hormones In Skeletons Over 1,000 Years Old
  • The First Neolithic Self-Portrait? Stony Human Face Emerges In 12,000-Year-Old Ruins At Karahan Tepe
  • Women Are Diagnosed With ADHD 5 Years Later Than Men, Even With Worse Symptoms
  • What Is Cryptozoology? We Explore The History And Mystery Of This Controversial Field
  • The Universe’s “Red Sky Paradox” Just Got Darker: Most Stars Might Never Host Observers
  • Uranus And Neptune May Not Be “Ice Giants” But The Solar System’s First “Rocky Giants”
  • COVID-19 Can Alter Sperm And Affect Brain Development In Offspring, Causing Anxious Behavior
  • Why Do Spiders’ Legs Curl Up Like That When They’re Dead?
  • “Dead Men’s Fingers” Might Just Be The Strangest Fruit On The Planet
  • The South Atlantic’s Giant Weak Spot In The Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Growing
  • Nearly Half A Century After Being Lost, “Zombie Satellite” LES-1 Began Sending Signals To Earth
  • Extinct In the Wild, An Incredibly Rare Spix’s Macaw Chick Hatches In New Hope For Species
  • HUNTR/X Or Giant Squid? Following Alien Claims, We Asked Scientists What They Would Like Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS To Be
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version