Mycocepurus smithii  (photo: Alex Wild, 2007)

Because I know you love news about insects, here’s more.

There is an all-female species of ant in the Amazon that gets on fine without sex.  Yep.  They reproduce by cloning themselves instead. 

DNA testing found that all of the ants were identical to the queen ants.  And that’s not all.  Apparently, these ants are physically incapable of mating.

Asexual reproduction is extremely rare in ants, and even when they can reproduce asexually, it is an alternate – not the only – method of reproduction available to them.  The reason this ant species is such a big deal is that they don’t mate at all.

So why would this ant species have developed this way?  Aside from the obvious advantage of not having to deal with men headaches?

There are a couple major advantages to asexual reproduction.  One is that you don’t need a mate to have offspring.  The second is that asexual reproduction requires much less energy and resources.

So if asexual reproduction is so great, why haven’t we developed the ability to clone ourselves?  Because lemme tell you…I can use at least a couple clones of myself right now.

The reason we reproduce sexually is that having offspring with mixed genes from 2 parents (instead of identical genes from one parent) increases our chances of survival.  More diversity means we’re less likely to be wiped out by a single disease.

The other cool thing about these ants is that they know how to farm.  Yep.  They cultivate fungus gardens for food, and they’ve been doing this for 80 million years.  So yeah…a lot longer than we have.

The article.

Thanks to G!  Who was able to clone herself, but she’s a little defective, as she likes to run away and cry instead of lashing out violently.  Oh well.  Maybe next time G.