Venom is associated with being harmful, but red imported fire ants are using their venom for its medicinal benefits by sharing the toxic substance with their nestmates, according to a study published in the Journal of Insect ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 7, 2022
0
68
Eating fire ants might prepare a lizard's immune system to be stung by the ants, according to a new study by researchers at Penn State. The study comprehensively assessed how the immune system responds to lizards eating and ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 17, 2022
0
106
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
Noah rode out his flood in an ark. Winnie-the-Pooh had an upside-down umbrella. Fire ants (Solenopsis invicta), meanwhile, form floating rafts made up of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of individual insects.
Plants & Animals
Mar 2, 2022
0
152
A team of researchers at the University of Colorado has found that fire ants can create 'appendages' on the rafts they make out of their own bodies when they find themselves in water. In their paper published in the Journal ...
A team of researchers at Canada's Simon Fraser University has found that several species of spiders avoid areas where fire ants have recently congregated. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, ...
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
Researchers have observed black imported fire ants using sand to draw liquid food out of containers, when faced with the risk of drowning. This is the first time this sophisticated tool use has been reported in animals. These ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 8, 2020
1
1081
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
Fire ants build living rafts to survive floods and rainy seasons. Georgia Tech scientists are studying if a fire ant colony's ability to respond to changes in their environment during a flood is an instinctual behavior and ...
General Physics
Nov 26, 2019
0
230
