Cloning In The Animal Kingdom

tanveer1979 writes "The New Scientist is carrying an interesting article on cloning in nature." From the article: "The ant Wasmannia Auropunctata, which is native to Central and South America but has spread into the US and beyond, has opted for a unique stand-off in the battle of the sexes. Both queens and males reproduce by making genetically identical copies of themselves - so males and females seem to have entirely separate gene pools. Conventional reproduction happens only to produce workers. This is the first instance in the animal kingdom where males reproduce exclusively by cloning, though male honeybees do it occasionally." National Geographic is also carrying the story.

Comments

nomenclature

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my pet peeves is how the media in general consistently screws up binomial nomenclature...it's not Wasmannia Auropunctata - the correct form is Wasmannia auropunctata...the genus name is capitalized, the species name is not...ever! Petty? Maybe...but only if you feel that being correct is not important...non-scientists just don't take the time to understand & then blame scientists for not telling them...so consider yourself told. :)

Re:cloning uncommon?

[h4rm0ny]

I googled for it as you suggested. And now I'm going to have nightmares for a month.

The link is here. It also contains a link to an article on the Fire Ants that attacked Australia.

Re: Ants in the Pants

[PakProtector]

It's okay. Yours is good. I've just got a great deal more experience at saying outrageous and outrageously stupid things.

I was something of an army brat, and till I was about 14 all my friends were over 60 vets, buddies of my Grandpa.

Of course, I didn't get to polish it up until I was in the JROTC.

Nothing like being 16 and 'talking' your 'supply sergeant' into giving you live ammo for a gun so you and your pals could go down to the shooting range.

High Times.

Colony genetics

[scaryfish]

Ants (and bees) have some pretty interesting genetics going on. The evolutionary reason behind why they form hives and colonies is kind of counter-intuitive - why would a worker give up its reproductive potential?

Bees are haplo-diploid. That means that females are diploid (2 copies of every chromosome) but males are haploid, forming from unfertilised eggs. So when eggs are fertilised by males, the offspring (workers) end up having 1/2 their mother's DNA but all of their fathers. This means that unlike "normal" sexual reproduction, siblings share 3/4 of their DNA on average, which is more than they could share with their own offspring. So it is in their genes best interest to help produce more siblings than to produce their own offspring.

Re:Evolutionary dead end?

[(negative video)]

How do they manage to survive as species without the benefit of variation from sexual reproduction?

The workers, which are most exposed to the big nasty world, get half their genes from each parent. That gives some variation, and the (cloned) fertile ants have their food and water thoroughly filtered by the workers, which gives them protection that most parthenogenic species don't get. This genetic system was only recently discovered and the investigations are very preliminary, so it isn't yet known if crossing-over occurs rarely.

Re:Male? Female?

[lav-chan]

It isn't even always that simple in humans, either. There are females with only one X chromosome. There are also males with two X chromosomes plus a Y chromosome, and males with two Y chromosomes plus an X chromosome. There are even males and females that are completely opposite of the way they should be (males with XX and females with XY). And then there are some that are even crazier, like with three or four or maybe even five chromosomes.

This is pretty rare (like 1% of all people, i think, and a lot of them get surgery or hormone treatment or something to 'counter-act' the obvious effects), but it still occurs.

Re:Anyone seen the print edition?

[jmauro]

A more in depth explination of the situation is provided on Pharyngula, here