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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.
But aren't most of the ants in a colony workers?
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
I find it interesting that they speak as though the male ants had an intelligence that decided to modify its genes as described. I tried changing my genes and it didn't help me run faster, jump higher, or gain the ability to remember where I put my keys. Usually, I don't find those bad boys until I change my jeans.
Whether they clone or not doesn't concern me. They are all equal in my eyes when I'm holding the Raid can.
This is the first instance in the animal kingdom where males reproduce exclusively by cloning
Are you kidding? How do you think Slashdotters reproduce?
The coolest voice ever.
They are an afront to Jesus and the holy book and thy sinning, cloning, ants that dare copulate in an unnatural way must be cast down to the lair of Satan.
The queen also can produce both males and potentially other queens. In bees, when another queen is hatched and matured it will likely challenge the existing queen and the winner will continue the hive. Survival of the fittest indeed. I'd imagine it works similarily with ants. The queen is usually the key because she makes all the other ants. What is different here is that the queen is cloning herself and so are the males, that is, if they can prove this theory. Perhaps the fireants are evolving into a super colony themselves.
zosxavius photography
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. :)
I remember back in the '80s we used to modify our jeans with a pair of scissors. That didn't help us run faster, jump higher, or gain the ability to remember where we put our keys either. Oh well 2 down, ininitely many more to go.
In a lot of ways I think that the above is true. However, I don't really know if the hive mentality would ever really truly fit for humans though as they tend to show many more tendancies towards the herd or the pack mentality. Once you start thinking of most humans as sheep, the world starts making more sense and starts becoming a lot more depressing. Face it. People just don't want to think about the world and what is going on in it. I know that there are exceptions, but most people do not want the responsibility that comes with knowledge of their world and are much more content sitting in the comfort of their low crime cookie-cutter suburb watching network television than worrying about all hte really terrible things that are happening to people all over the globe.
Hell, if people would just start thinking of how much freaking garbage they produce on a weekly basis and the big fucking hole in the woods that someone dug and lined with plastic to dump it all...oh hell, what's the fucking use?
No wonder people get depressed.
zosxavius photography
"This apparently gave males both the time and the means to evolve a counterattack--converting some of the workers into males."
Huh. Around here, we hang up posters of nekkid queen ants. Oooooh, those unarticulated segements! Kind of makes you want to pupate, doesn't it?
Clearly, all ants are going to hell.
[o]_O
Q: How does the PHB make the IT department's server storage redundant and bug free?
A: He sprays it with Raid.
Lame, I know....
From the article:
"'It's a selfish strategy initiated by females [in which] queens transmit 100 percent of their genome,' Fournier said."
Wow, sounds like Fournier is waging his own battle of the sexes. Those selfish females, they want to clone themselves rather than have sex with me!
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.
Its Wasmannia aropunctata not "Wasmannia Auropunctata", the species name is never in caps. No chance in hell the editors would catch that though...
only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd
Indeed. If your population is replenished only by cloning, its a good idea to run a quick fsck on the samples used for each generation, lest you accidently produce a generation of less than stellar genetic integrity.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
The Nat. Geographic article hints at how this works, basically all the DNA from the female is eliminated from the egg by the male DNA.
:)
The way the submitter, and the New Scientist teaser worded it you were left wondering exactly how the male ants cloned themselves. Little ant laboratories perhaps? Being a matriarchy, I'm sure their government disapproves.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
But..but..they will not have a soul.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Are these classifications really relevant to this species? I'm always amused by the need of scientists to classify species as male and female. Like the Sea Horse, where the "male" gets pregnant. How meaningful is that?
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
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.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
When people start Cloning Britney Spears as a marketable commodity will the clones turn out to be the same sort of strumpet? I would guess that that would be what they would want anyway.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
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.
i'm not sure why cloning in nature comes to us as a surprise at all. all single cellular organisms duplicate themselves (i.e. cloning). we've already known for a long that that many animals in the animal kingdom are known to have asexual reproduction.
. htm
from http://biology.about.com/library/weekly/aa090700a
In asexual reproduction, one individual produces offspring that are genetically identical to itself. These offspring are produced by mitosis. There are many invertebrates, including sea stars and sea anemones for example, that produce by asexual reproduction.
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