Ant Has Given Up Sex Completely

[Aught3]

The complete asexuality of a widespread fungus-gardening ant, the only ant species in the world known to have dispensed with males entirely, has been confirmed by a team of Texas and Brazilian researchers.

Most social insects,the wasps, ants and bees,are relatively used to daily life without males. Their colonies are well run by swarms of sterile sisters lorded over by an egg-laying queen. But, eventually, all social insect species have the ability to produce a crop of males who go forth in the world to fertilize new queens and propagate.

Queens of the ant Mycocepurus smithii reproduce without fertilization and males appear to be completely absent

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090825203339.htm

I'm guessing the ability to go without males is due to the queen's habit of flying large distances before establishing a new colony.

 

[5810Singer]

I'm guessing the ability to go without males is due to the queen's habit of flying large distances before establishing a new colony.

Would you mind explaining what you mean by "due to", that part eludes me?

 

[Aught3]

Species are in constant competition with each other and one of the main ways this competition occurs is through parasitism. The host species is constantly evolving new defences to the parasite and the parasites are constantly evolving new ways to counteract those defences. The problem with giving up sex is that it slows down the rate of evolution for your species giving parasites the advantage in the evolutionary arms race. Without some way to neutralise the advantage of the parasite the genetically identical ant colonies would be quickly overwhelmed once an infection started.

One way to overcome this problem is for one member of the host species to travel a large distance and establish a new colony away from the well adapted parasites. The parasites present in the new area would most likely not be adapted for exploiting the new colony and it would have sufficient time to grow and eventually send out new queens before the parasite could evolve to a more virulent strain. Of course this is just one possibility.

I should add that this is the Red Queen hypothesis (it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place) for anyone who wanted to look it up.

 

[5810Singer]

^^Cheers for that.

 

[JacobEvans]

I've been reading a bit on social insects and I have wondered how it could be that none of them have become entirely female, especially when asexual reproduction is so prevalent among social insects. And now this comes along and confirms my suspicions.