So-called “social parasites” begin their journey with queens. Without workers to take care of them, they die. Parasitic ants enter a colony of closely related ants to survive, and as long as their numbers remain relatively low, they and their offspring become colony parasites. “They appear to have the ability to regulate their own reproduction so as not to drive the host colony to extinction,” said Waring Trible, the study’s lead author.
For a long time it was believed that they developed these traits through a series of mutations in an isolated environment. However, scientists have discovered queen-like mutants, parasitic ants, spontaneously appearing in Ooceraea biroi ant colonies, which do not normally have a queen. “This mutant is similar to its predecessor of other parasitic species.”Trible says. “This is a new way of understanding how ants become socially parasitic.”.
Whole genome sequencing showed that parasitic queens have a mutation in chromosome 13 that is structurally similar to chromosomes that regulate the social structure of colonies in other ants. It seems that with this single mutation, “you can go from a normal ant to a parasite within the same species,” say the study’s authors.
Source: Ferra
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