Saturday, April 18, 2009

Real science: No males please; producing them wastes energy!

Image accompanying the article Ants inhabit world without sex by Victoria Gill at BBC NewsVictoria Gill at BBC talks of an ant species that has gotten rid of the need to "waste" energy on having males! Reproduction by cloning the queen's genome.

"It avoids the energetic cost of producing males, and doubles the number of reproductive females produced each generation from 50% to 100% of the offspring."

[via io9]

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