One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants
- Y. Juvé
- C. Lutrat
- A. Ha
- A. Weyna
- E. Lauroua
- A. C. Afonso Silva
- C. Roux
- E. Schifani
- C. Galkowski
- C. Lebas
- R. Allio
- I. Stoyanov
- N. Galtier
- B. C. Schlick-Steiner
- F. M. Steiner
- D. Baas
- B. Kaufmann
- J. Romiguier
2025-09-03
Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring 1,2 . Here, we report a shift from this norm in Messor ibericus , an ant that lays individuals from two distinct species. In this life cycle, females must clone males of another species because they require their sperm to produce the worker caste. As a result, males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago. The evolutionary history of this system appears as sexual parasitism 3 that evolved into a natural case of cross-species cloning 4,5 , resulting in the maintenance of a male-only lineage cloned through distinct species’ ova. We term females exhibiting this reproductive mode as xenoparous, meaning they give birth to other species as part of their life cycle.