PHOTO IN THE NEWS: All-Female Ant Species Found

April 17, 2009—Save the males? Too late for Mycocepurus smithii (pictured). This leaf-cutter ant species is all female and thrives without sex of any kind—ever—according to a new study. The ants have evolved to reproduce only when queens clone themselves.

Clipped from: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Ants inhabit 'world without sex'

Ants inhabit 'world without sex'

An Amazonian ant has dispensed with sex and developed into an all-female species, researchers have found.
The ants reproduce via cloning - the queen ants copy themselves to produce genetically identical daughters.
[...]
Anna Himler, the biologist from the University of Arizona who led the research, told BBC News that the team used a battery of tests to verify their findings.
[...]
There are advantages to life without sex, Dr Himler explained.

"It avoids the energetic cost of producing males, and doubles the number of reproductive females produced each generation from 50% to 100% of the offspring."

Clipped from: Mycocepurus smithii - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mycocepurus smithii

Mycocepurus smithii is an attini fungus-growing ant from Latin America whose species consists exclusively of females which reproduce asexually. The queen reproduces by parthenogenesis and all ants in a colony are female clones of the queen.^[1] The ants cultivate a garden of fungus inside their colony grown with pieces of dead vegetables and other insects. It is this capacity for farming which initially prompted research into the species as a basal genus member would provide insight into the natural history of the fungal-cultivating ant tribe, Attini.^[2]

Himler research
The research team was led by a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States, Anna Himler.^[1]^[5] The researchers initially were interested in the ants' capability for cultivating fungus.^[5] The researchers used DNA profiling to confirm that each member of the colony was genetically identical to the queen.^[5] They also discovered through a process of dissection that the mussel organ, a female docking apparatus within the vagina used to hook the mate's genitalia,^[6] had degenerated in members of this species.^[7] A total of six separate tests were carried out, with the researchers unable to locate any male members of the species.^[1] The team's findings were then published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.^[7]