Researchers have uncovered an unusual survival strategy in Iberian harvester ants that turns basic biology on its head: The queens can produce eggs that develop into two different ant species.

Bizarrely, Iberian harvester ant queens lay eggs that turn into male builder harvester ants, and some of her offspring are ...

A queen ant in southern Europe has become the first known animal to consistently produce offspring that are members of a ...

The researchers even coined a word for it, xenoparity, meaning “foreign birth”. It pushes the boundaries of what we mean by ...

When an animal parent has a child, both will belong to the same species. Humans beget humans, combfish beget combfish, and ...

The discovery of an unusual reproductive system for one ant species solves a long-standing puzzle about a missing population of another ant species. Each of these species clones males: the father’s ...

Some ant queens can produce offspring of more than one species – even when the other species is not known to exist in the nearby wild. No other animal on Earth is known to do this, and it's hard for ...

Queen Iberian harvester ants can produce ants of their own species (left) and also that of a different cousin species (right). © Jonathan Romiguier Ant life can be ...