Editor's Summary
30 June 2005
The sexual divide
An extreme case of sexual conflict has been unearthed in the little fire ant Wasmannia auropunctata. Queens produce sterile workers by sexual reproduction, but all new queens are produced clonally. This potentially reduces male reproductive success to zero but in an apparent response, males thwart queens by eliminating the female genome during brood development. Sons therefore have nuclear genomes identical to those of their father: they too are clonally produced. This remarkable reproductive system effectively results in a complete separation of the male and female gene pools.
News and Views: Evolutionary biology: Males from Mars
In an ant species — or is it two species? — females are produced only by females and males only by males. Explanations of this revelation have to invoke some decidedly offbeat patterns of natural selection.
David Queller
doi: 10.1038/4351167a
Letter: Clonal reproduction by males and females in the little fire ant
Denis Fournier, Arnaud Estoup, Jérôme Orivel, Julien Foucaud, Hervé Jourdan, Julien Le Breton and Laurent Keller
doi: 10.1038/nature03705
