This Ant Species Produces Only Queens!
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Most ant colonies are built around a single queen that lays all the eggs. Around her, thousands of female workers build and maintain the nest, gather food, and care for the young. There is also a small number of males. Their only role is to mate with the queen before they die. However, Temnothorax kinomurai (T. kinomurai) follows a completely different strategy.
This species is a social parasite. Its queens do not form traditional colonies with their own workers. Instead, they try to take over the nests of a closely related species called T. makora. These takeover attempts are risky. Some invading queens are killed by the host ants, while others fail to gain control of the nest.
But when a T. kinomurai queen does succeed, she kills the resident queen and becomes the new ruler of the colony. The host workers remain unaware that their queen has been replaced. They continue their normal duties and even raise the parasite’s offspring.
T. kinomurai has been known to scientists for over 40 years. However, how it could produce only queens remained a mystery. To investigate, a team of German and Japanese researchers collected six T. kinomurai colonies and placed them in artificial nest boxes in the laboratory. These colonies produced 43 offspring. All of them were queens!
These new queens were given the chance to invade colonies of T. makora in the wild. Seven of them successfully captured the host nests. They went on to produce 57 more offspring. These were again confirmed to be all queens.
To understand how this was possible, the researchers examined egg development. They found that these queens can produce eggs without a male. As a result, each new queen is almost identical to her mother. The study was published in the journal Current Biology on February 23, 2026.
Fortunately, this species is very rare and has only been found in nine locations across Japan. This means most ant colonies are safe from the crafty queens.
Resources: Livescience.com, Zmescience.com, Nature.com
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42 Comments
beardtho6 daysI HAVE ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE THIS : SCARY
starrry6 daysI feel bad for the queen ant because it literlly kills the queen.
nomonskinwalker6 daysALL QUEENS?
marzia7 daysCreepy and cool at the same time and....- GIRLS RULE!!😝😝😝
fejokuwejuza7 daysI also like it that these ants can kill the parasites
viper12347 dayscool that it can make offspring by her self
tzgameingz7 daysnice way to trick
julius3117 daysparasites succeed yet again!
darenr7 dayspretty cool
4ndres_sot07 dayscrazy how an ant species can take over like that
