One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants

    It's generally assumed in the field of genetics that organisms produce offspring of the same species. This article explored how Messor ibericus, a species of ant, are able to give birth to offspring of two different species: Messor Ibericus and Messor Structor. For most ants, queens handle most if not all of the offspring, which they fertilize with sperm obtained during their nuptial flights from male ants, called alates, of the same species. The sperm is stored in a unique organ called the spermatheca, that helps store the sperm and keep it fertile for upwards of 30 years in some species, requiring the queen to only be fertilized once. In this case, it was discovered that Messor Ibericus cannot reproduce without the sperm of Messor Structor males. Thus, for the species to survive, the Ibericus queens have adapted a unique type of sexual hybridization through sperm parasitism, to create both male Ibericus and male Structor to boost reproductive odds of the species as a whole during nuptial flights. The article theorizes that the adaptation was forced, as the species diverged over 5 million years ago, yet were pushed to two distinct locations. One population was left without Structor, and was forced to hybridize. 

Sources:

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

https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Messor_ibericus