An ant colony is sustained through complex social dynamics, with each member—the queen, males and workers (sterile females)—contributing to the greater community. Some species add complexity to this dynamic with the addition ...
Ecology
Mar 28, 2024
0
214
The queens in colonies of social insects, such as ants, bees, and wasps, are considered the veritable embodiment of specialization in the animal kingdom.
Plants & Animals
Mar 26, 2024
0
140
Cooperation is a key innovation in evolution, from evolution of genomes and multicellular organisms to insect societies, such as ants and honeybees to human societies. Crucially, any cooperation is stable only when conflicts ...
Evolution
Mar 9, 2023
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5
Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have discovered that a new form of ant society spread across species. They found that after the new form of society evolved in one species, a "social supergene" carrying the ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 11, 2022
2
946
The invasive ant world is a competitive one, rife with territorial battles and colony raids. And yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes), one of the world's worst invasive species, have an especially interesting trait: ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 21, 2021
0
10
A team of researchers from the New York University School of Medicine and Arizona State University has found that a certain ant species is unique in that worker ants can increase and shrink their brain size when needed. In ...
In one species of ants, workers duel to establish new leadership after the death of their queen. While these sparring matches stretch for more than a month, changes in behavior and gene expression in the first three days ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 18, 2021
0
154
A unique study conducted by University of Georgia entomologists led to the discovery of a distinctive supergene in fire ant colonies that determines whether young queen ants will leave their birth colony to start their own ...
Ecology
Oct 16, 2020
0
173
Newly mated queens of the red fire ant select nest sites with a relatively low pathogen risk by detecting odors produced by soil bacteria that inhibit the growth of ant-infecting fungi, according to a study published September ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 10, 2020
0
132
Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have found that harmful mutations accumulating in the fire ant social chromosome are causing its breakdown.
Plants & Animals
Aug 25, 2020
0
135
