Living organisms are assumed to produce same- #species #offspring.

But this is not the case for 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 that evolved into a natural case of cross-species cloning, resulting in the maintenance of a male-only lineage cloned through distinct species’ ova.

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