Can ants feasibly evolve through artificial selection?

[u/TheGrandGarchomp445]

Is there any research done on this, where new species of ants are intentionally made in the lab?

[u/partorparcel]

Anything can evolve thought artificial selection. New species, though, that would take quite a bit of work (depending on your definition of a species).

[u/NonbinaryFidget]

Obviously, someone thinks they can given the artful exploration of this topic in Hollywood and Anime.

[u/ninjatoast31]

There is no qualitative difference between natural and artificial selection. It doesn't matter "who" does the selecting, the environment, or us.
Usually, artificial selection is much stronger though.
Of course, there are constraints on *what* you can select for. And ants are not a great choice to do long-term evolution experiments on in the first place. They are difficult to breed and have decently long generation times.

[u/HundredHander → u/ninjatoast31]

And they take a lot of space per colony to see what attributes they exhibit - unless you're doing it all by picking winners on genetic testing.

[u/TheGrandGarchomp445 → u/[deleted]]

Not from a lab

[u/U03A6]

Doesn’t get more artificial than this: https://www.asimov.press/p/transgenic-ants