Don't lots of species store sperm? I see nothing too remarkable about a single individual being able to start a colony unless no species do store sperm.
There are other known ways of one individual being able to start a new population:
- The simplest and most obvious way to do this is to be a clonal organism.
- But you can go more complicated than that. You can have a female parthenogenetically give birth to males and then mate with those males. Aphids do this. (Actually, some cursory research suggests that aphids are more likely to give parthenogenetic birth to a batch of sons and daughters who then mate with each other?)
- The simplest and most obvious way to do this is to be a clonal organism.
- But you can go more complicated than that. You can have a female parthenogenetically give birth to males and then mate with those males. Aphids do this. (Actually, some cursory research suggests that aphids are more likely to give parthenogenetic birth to a batch of sons and daughters who then mate with each other?)