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On A Lighter Note: Lesbian Ant Species Confirmed! [message #60558]

Thu, 14 January 2010 12:47

Brody Levesque

Really getting into it

Location: US/Canada
Registered: September 2009
Messages: 733

An ant species native to the South American region has completely eliminated males from its population. Mycocepurus smithii, a fungus-gardening ant, reproduces without any males whatsoever, and has been doing it for millions of years.

Science Daily reports:

"Animals that are completely asexual are relatively rare, which makes this is a very interesting ant," says [Christian] Rabeling, an ecology, evolution and behavior graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. "Asexual species don't mix their genes through recombination, so you expect harmful mutations to accumulate over time and for the species to go extinct more quickly than others. They don't generally persist for very long over evolutionary time."

This species appears to have been around for 2 million years, which is relatively short compared to the 50 million years its fellow fungus-farming ant species have been around. Rabeling also dissected the Mycocepurus smithii queens, and discovered their sperm storage vessels are empty, so it isn't as if they've produced a few males, gotten inseminated, and then killed them off quickly.

Technically these ants reproduce asexually, not through some kind of Nicola Griffith-style lesbian parthenogenesis. They are, however, one of the only known all-female animal species. Who is to say whether it wasn't some lesbian urge that caused them to diverge from other ant species and give up sperm altogether?

Rabeling says that more research is needed to determine exactly how these ants are maintaining genetic diversity, and when they diverged from similar species.

Okay, so does this mean that there's a Gay 'male' species out there still waiting to be discovered?

Lesbian Ants Photo By Science Daily

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[Updated on: Thu, 14 January 2010 14:31]

Re: On A Lighter Note: Lesbian Ant Species Confirmed! [message #60569 is a reply to message #60558]

Thu, 14 January 2010 21:57

chrisjames147

Really getting into it

Location: U.S.
Registered: November 2009
Messages: 630

Brody, you're having entirely too much fun on your job. I'm still laughing because I have this vision of the Board of Trustees at the University of Texas discovering how their research money is being spent. Wouldn't you love to be a fly (or maybe an ant) on the wall at that meeting. ;-D

[Updated on: Thu, 14 January 2010 21:57]

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)

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