Familiar Diversions
I'm a librarian who loves anime, manga, and reading a wide variety of genres.
Currently reading
Reading progress update: I've read 192 out of 234 pages.
AntiWiki is a thing that exists.
I found that out while looking up details on Wasmannia auropunctata (little fire ant), which is just referred to in this book as an invasive ant. Invasive where? It looks like its native habitat is in Central and South America and it can now be found in places like Florida, Puerto Rico, Cameroon, Israel, and north-eastern Australia.
The weird thing about this ant, according to this book, is that both the queens and the males reproduce asexually. Queens are clones of their mother. Males are clones of their fathers, via a method I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around - the way the authors describe it, sperm enters the queen's eggs, destroys the queen's genetic material, and just sort of takes over. The queen lays the egg, but what hatches is a clone of the male. The workers are the product of normal fertilization. Why do the males' sperm sometimes take the egg completely over and sometimes develop into workers? The authors never even ask this question, much less provide any answers.
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