red barbed ant form single sex nests

[kolin]

In the news article

Rare red ants get a helping hand BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Rare red ants get a helping hand

"The ants are quite unusual because they form nests that are either all female or all male," said Emily Brennan, ZSL's native species conservation programme manager.


Other ant species have colonies with queens and sterile female workers. The only males are winged which mate with potential winged queens and die in a short time.


I found an interesting article on the genetics of fire ants

Pharyngula::Clone war of the sexes

This explains the competion of male/female gene pools and perhaps why barbed ants create
seperate sex nests.

some ant nests produce a high ratio of female eggs as these are genetically closer to the workers than male ants.

Does anyone have any information on whether there are male workers or that just the winged ants produced by one nest are all male or female.

[wyevilla]

I can't give you any help with your question, but thank you for this post anyway. These are both excellant articles and they take further the concept of selfish genes as proposed by Dawkins.

Welcome to WAB. I'm sure you will find it fascinating.