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
- yozkaya8 daysI was thinking about the insects from the article.
s1717528 daysVery good info
tyfatozamugi8 daysWow, that's so cool to see live, also the queen getting murdered was betrayed.- tyfatozamugi8 daysWow, that's cool!!
cojyfasyjahi8 daysi love this so much
cimubekitiji8 daysthat is so cool
amethystfromgd8 daysWhat if in 2045 the craft ant queens completely take over the ant colonies
pherathecat37 daysthat would be CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- amethystfromgd8 days9 locations is kinda a lot if you ask me, lets hope the ant colonies dog get taken out by the crafty queens.
- cimubekitiji8 daysthat is so cool
