How Ants Create Clones Indefinitely

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Ant Ant

Queen ants are waaay ahead of us on cloning science. C. kagutsuchi lay unfertilized eggs that hatch into an entirely different species of worker ants, C. obscurior.

• Worker clones are all male and genetically chimeric

• Nuclear DNA comes from the queen

• While her previous C. obsurior mate provided mitochondrial DNA

Hybrid males cannot reproduce and function just like workers in homogenous colonies. This first known example of asexual interspecies reproduction challenges conventional species definitions and could inspire future hybridization discoveries.

More work being lost to AI (ant intelligence)

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