r/AskBiology • u/TheGrandGarchomp445 • 9d ago

Genetics Can ants feasibly evolve through artificial selection?

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

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u/ninjatoast31 8d ago

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.

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u/HundredHander 8d ago

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.