One queen ant, two species: the discovery that reshapes what ‘family’ means in nature

By Audrey O'Grady, Associate Professor in Biology, University of Limerick
Nataliia Kosiuk, PhD Candidate in Biological Sciences, University of Limerick

Imagine a mum who can have children from two different species. Family gatherings would be interesting, to say the least. In the insect world, this is no joke. A new study published in Nature shows that queens of the Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) routinely lay eggs of not just to their own kind, but also of males of another species, Messor structor.

The researchers even coined a word for it, xenoparity, meaning “foreign birth”. It pushes the boundaries of what we mean by “species”.…

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