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429 points sampo | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.284s | source
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corygarms ◴[] No.45302603[source]
This is nuts. If I'm understanding correctly, the M. ibiricus queen mates with a M. structor male, uses his sperm to create sterile, hybrid female worker ants for her colony, then she (astonishingly) can also lay eggs that develop into fertile M. structor males, which means she has removed her genetic material from the egg and effectively cloned the male she previously mated with.
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1. rsynnott ◴[] No.45303712[source]
It may not be as weird as all that (of course, it’s still spectacularly weird) because fertile male ants are haploid!