In Sept. 2025, a team of scientists searched for a missing ant species and found something incredible: a queen ant capable of giving birth to two different species. Researchers noticed that Iberian Harvester ants were creating a hybrid species with the Messor structure ant, which have many colonies in parts of the Mediterranean. They found the mutation based off of the ant’s hair, noticing that the Iberian harvester ants had hair while the Messor structor ant did not. When they found a Messor Structor Iberian harvester ant hybrid on the island of Sicily, they did not have an answer as to where it had come from. While one may say it is common for animals to crossbreed, especially within their families, the nearest known Messor Structor ant colony is 1000 km away from the island of Sicily, where the hybrid Iberian Harvester ants were found. The team was confused and sought to figure out this mystery. 

Led by evolutionary biologist Jonathan Romiguier of the University of Montpellier, the team found that the events leading up to this reproductive miracle were evolutionary. The two ant species, Messor Structor and Iberian Harvester, were originally one and split about 5 million years ago. For a long time, the split did not affect the two species; however, 1 million years ago the Iberian Harvester ants were unable to produce their own worker ants, so they began to mate with the Messor Structor ants. This led to the creation of the hybrid ant species. In order to produce this hybrid species, the Iberian Harvester queens had to travel to find a Messor Structor ant to mate with. This was a tedious and difficult process, so the queen Iberian harvester ants found an easier way to reproduce, called sexual domestication. Sexual domestication can be described as cloning the DNA of Messor Structor ants. The queen clones the DNA from the sperm and stores it, later replacing her own nuclear DNA with the stored DNA when creating hybrid ants. This allows her to give birth to the hybrid species as well as her own, creating a more productive colony. Not only does this create a more productive colony because of the additional strength this hybrid brings, but it also means that the Iberian Harvester ants can live miles away from the Messor Structor ants without dying off. 

During this investigation, researchers also found that only “pure” Iberian harvester ants could become queens whereas the ants that were created from the cloned Messor Structor sperm could only become female worker ants. The discovery of the Iberian Harvester ant’s ability is ground breaking and unseen before in the scientific world. It introduces a new form of reproduction which was coined by Romiguier as xenoparous. This term comes from the prefix xeno which means foreign or different and parous which means to give birth or produce. This ant’s ability to clone sperm and create hybrid species without needing to mate with the other is incredible; however, it also means that this ant can now asexually reproduce. Asexual reproduction has many outcomes, one of which is a decrease in genetic diversity, which heightens the chance of extinction in the species.