Thursday, April 16, 2009

All-female ant species

To all the ladies sick of the dating world, take heart. Males are not really necessary.
While asexual reproduction occurs in many kinds of "lower" animals, biologists have always believed a species could not dispense with males altogether because all-female reproduction without the additional genetic material males provide is basically cloning. As the same set of genetic instructions is copied over and over, the accumulation of small defects would eventually catch up to the species. The tropical ant Mycocepurus smithii, though, has found a way around this. How and why are still unknown.

No comments: