Our study on complex cryptic co-infections of Spiroplasma in European Myrmica ants is now published with @tparmentier.bsky.social @emmavanreempts.bsky.social @selfishmeme.bsky.social Tessa, Wouter and Diego doi.org/10.1111/mec.... .
Entomologists and particle accelerator physicists have collaborated to produce a new 3D atlas of what makes up an ant, including muscles, nerves, digestive tracts, and exoskeletons. The images are free to access. spectrum.ieee.org/3d-scanning-...
Very important paper for people working on supergenes, particularly in ants:
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Happy Darwin Day to all! To celebrate can you comment with your favorite paper on evolutionary biology from the last few years? Whatever comes to mind and whichever paper that really changed your view of evolution.
New work from @miyapan.bsky.social and our team, bringing ant, bee, and wasp labs together. @chuanxinyu.bsky.social shows that the ANTSR locus we discovered in ants has determined sex for 150+ My across bees and stinging wasps 🐜🐝, despite virtually no sequence conservation 😮 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
I spend a fair amount of time talking about this amazing ant paper from last year: www.nature.com/articles/s41... where the females produce offspring of two different species! Wild! 🐜
No contest. Just read the first two sentences of the abstract. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The strangest ant reproduction yet 🐜
Some Messor ants make workers that are hybrids of two species, ensuring a stable workforce when environment cues fail.
Learn more with @selfishmeme.bsky.social in our FREE Brad Ashby Memorial Lecture (29 Jan 2026).
Register: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1970355572...
New @royentsoc.bsky.social #ResearchHighlight available!
Recent work by Juvé et al. in #RESSystematicEnt reveals the evolutionary history of Messor harvester ants, a genus adapted to arid environments & with some of the most complex reproductive systems known so far.
Read more ⬇️
buff.ly/xGeFrKr
Passionnante découverte : une étude conduite à Montpellier montre qu’une même fourmi peut donner naissance à des individus de deux espèces différentes. C’est la xénoparité, qui s’ajoute à la grande diversité des modes de reproduction chez ces insectes. www.mediapart.fr/journal/ecol...
This work benefited from the support of the @erc.europa.eu grant RoyalMess, hosted by @cnrs.fr , @isemevol.bsky.social and @umontpellier.bsky.social.
Article freely available here for more details: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#Xenoparity shows how sexual parasitism can evolve to a self-sufficient unit of selection, where two species bind their lifecycles. Question: When two species sexually depend on each other and are produced by the same colonies, how should we consider the resulting superorganism?
This reveals a new reproductive mode: #xenoparity —"giving birth to alien species". By becoming xenoparous, M. ibericus queens allowed themselves to expand their range, cloning M. structor males in their colonies and invading Southern Europe with hybrid workers.
⚠️Wilder: workers have two father types - wild males (from M. structor nests) or clones (only in M. ibericus nests). This suggests that queens domesticated M. structor males by cloning them from the wild. Fun detail: clonal vs. wild males look different, like pigs vs. boars🐗→🐷!
🔬Other key result: this queen's spermatheca contains sperm from both species. For cross-species cloning to occur, this means that maternal DNA in the ova has been fully replaced by M. structor DNA stored in the spermatheca #androgenesis.
Lab evidences now 🧪:
🥚When isolating M. ibericus queens in the lab, we found that ~10% of their eggs carried ONLY M. structor nuclear DNA.
🔎Even better: after monitoring ~50 colonies in the lab during 18 months, we observed male adults of both species laid by a single queen.
🔍 How did we reach this odd conclusion? Field evidences first: we found M. structor males within 26 M. ibericus colonies (11 populations). All have:
✅100% M. structor nuclear genome.
✳️Mitochondria matching the M. ibericus queens of the colony, suggesting they're their mothers.
💡To ensure a sperm supply to mass-produce their hybrid workers, we found that M. ibericus queens clone M. structor males.
➡️Result? Males from the same mother have distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago.
🧬Sequencing 390 ant genomes (5 species) shows that Messor ibericus queens depend on M. structor sperm to produce all their workers.
⚠️Problem: these hybrid workers invaded southern Europe, while M. structor colonies are missing. How's possible? Where do the fathers come from?
Messor harvester ants dominate Southern Europe by collecting seeds, turning them into "ant bread"🥖.
But this is not the coolest thing about them: in some species, queens are sperm parasites, as they rely on sperm from other species to produce their workers.
Cross-species cloning in ants 🐜
These two males belong to different species—but share the same mother. How? Why?
To celebrate the print release of our last paper in this week’s @nature.com (issue 8084), here’s a thread summarizing the results. Why? Let’s dive in🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thanks for noticing it, here's a link for the raw data available in NCBI: trace.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/?view...
The #OpenAccess #EditorsChoice article for the issue reports on the #phylogenomics of Messor harvester #ants (Hymenoptera: #Formicidae: Stenammini), and unravels their biogeographical origin and #diversification patterns.
Why not give it a read?
doi.org/10.1111/syen.12693
@selfishmeme.bsky.social
🐜 Une nouvelle étude révèle un phénomène inédit dans le règne animal : certaines reines donnent naissance à des mâles d’une autre espèce. Ce mécanisme appelé « xénoparité » permet à leurs colonies de survivre.
Explications avec des GIF de fourmis ⬇️
Thanks to @cjgiaimo.bsky.social for this nice article in @nytimes.com (www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/s...) about our last study (www.nature.com/articles/s41...)
A new Science study of ants in Fiji—involving genomic sequencing of over 4000 ant specimens from museum collections—shows that most native species have been in decline since humans first arrived in the archipelago 3000 years ago. https://scim.ag/489mI2o
This is one of the most accurate coverage of the study I’ve seen (including written articles), it really deserves to be shared with both scientists and non-scientists!
If you’ve heard about our study on ants producing two different species but are still confused about how it works (and don’t have time to read the paper), this 10-minute video made by @bengthomas.bsky.social is very informative:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O4...
Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
