Breaking the Rules of Inheritance: The Ants That Birth Another Species

 

Breaking the Rules of Inheritance: The Ants That Birth Another Species

Kylee French

BIOL-2110-001 - GENETICS

Professor Guy F. Barbato

September 16, 2025

    Genetics has all kinds of rules in our lives, for it is everywhere we look. Its involved in animals, humans, our food we eat, and genetics is everywhere, guiding how traits are passed from one generation to the next. In genetics, we have studied for years that although it could be differnt looking, a species will always birth the same species. In other terms, a parent, like a whale, will always produce another baby whale when giving birth to its offspring. A whale is not going to produce a baby dolphin as its next of kin. However, all of this thinking might change how we look at genetics, for an ant species may have just challenged this comfortable idea in genetics. An article titled “These Ants Found a Loophole for a Fundamental Rule of Life” has recently been researching Messor ibericus ants birthing a different species to their own.

    Researchers recently discovered that queens of the Mediterranean harvester ant species Messor ibericus can produce male offspring that belong to an entirely different species, Messor structor. This concept was new to researchers, and at first, they didn't believe it either. A quote from the article states, “When they started their research, the idea that M. ibericus queens could lay two species of eggs was 'like a joke' among the team members, Dr. Romiguier said. As sampling efforts went on, it became a more serious hypothesis” (Giaimo, 2025). This was an ongoing battle for researchers, at first they didn't know what to call this new phenomena, but to name this new reproductive strategy they named it xenoparity. The M. ibericus queens are able to generate males of another species without mating with them. These foreign males then mate with M. ibericus queens to produce hybrid worker ants, which take on all the labor needed to maintain the colony. While studying this, researchers thought that the other species was living in their colonies. “Some M. ibericus colonies with hybrid workers are hundreds of miles from the closest M. structor colony. How are the M. ibericus queens even finding M. structor drone-dads to father their hybrid workers?” (Giaimo, 2025).

    This finding was astonishing because the two species diverged about five million years ago—roughly the same time humans and chimpanzees split from a common ancestor. The discovery challenges long-held genetic rules about inheritance and shows how evolution can produce unexpected strategies for survival. Although this discovery in new and needs to be studied more, I think this is a great next step for learning how species needs to adapt to survive. This discovery shows just how creative and resourceful nature can be, and it makes me wonder how humans might learn from it.

References

Giaimo, C. (2025, September 15). These Ants Found a Loophole for a Fundamental Rule of Life. NY Times. Retrieved September 17, 2025, from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/science/ants-species-babies.html?searchResultPosition=4

Strickland, A. (2025, September 13). Ant queen gives birth to two different species. CNN. Retrieved September 17, 2025, from https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/13/science/iberian-harvester-ants-two-species