For the New York Times, new member Rebecca Dzombak (@bdzombak) writes about “imposter queens,” mysterious parasitic ants that mooch off their colony’s food and produce only parasitic progeny. A new study explains their likely origin for the first time, and Dzombak deftly summarizes the surprising explanation that the parasites arise in a single generation simply as a result of inheriting two copies of a mutated, recessive “supergene.” Photo from Bharti et al (2021) via Wikimedia Commons
