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Researchers currently understood that these getting into queens utilize taken fragrances to camouflage themselves as a member of the nest. This works since ant vision is minimal and the nest is dark, so employees rely greatly on smells for acknowledgment and decision-making.
They were still not sure how the intruder persuaded the employee children to eliminate their own mom. To examine, Takasuka and his coworkers studied the ants’ habits in the laboratory. The findings were released Monday (Nov. 17) in the journal Existing Biology
They put an attacking queen with host employees and cocoons to make sure she got the ideal aroma, Takasuka stated.
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The parasitic ant queen Lasius orientalis ( left )infiltrates the nest of Lasius flavus and apporaches their queen( right )to release her chemical spray. (Image credit: Keizo Takasuka/Kyushu University)This scent acquisition simulates what would occur in the wild, Daniel Kronauer at the Rockefeller University in New York, who wasn’t associated with the research study, informed Live Science. “You sometimes see these queens outside of the colonies of host species and they chew on host workers and groom themselves with the chemicals of the host workers, so they can acquire a kind of invisibility,” he stated.
Next, the scientists presented an L. orientalis queen into an L. flavus nest, and an L. umbratus queen into an L. japonicus nest.
The getting into queens were mostly accepted by the employees and made their method towards the host queens.
Each parasite queen sprayed the host queen with stomach fluid then rapidly pulled away as the upset employees switched on their own queen and assaulted her. If the host queen made it through the attack, the parasite queen went back to spray her once again, till ultimately the host queen was eliminated and dismembered by her own children.
The ants can spray formic acid, which has a sharp, vinegar-like odorwhen threatened– and this is what Takasuka believes they are spraying at the host queen.
“When they get attacked, ants often spray the intruder with formic acid as a way of alerting other ants in the colony,” Kronauer stated. “So, it makes a lot of sense that this would be repurposed by the parasite queen. Basically, she’s telling them that the queen is an intruder by spraying her with formic acid, and that’s what triggers the attack.”
When the scenario has actually cooled down, the parasitic queen starts laying eggs of her own and the employees look after her and her offspring. At this moment, the employees are continuously crawling over her, and she mixes into the basic odor of the nest, Kronauer stated, “so, the parasite queen doesn’t have to keep killing workers and chewing on them.”
Ultimately the old employees pass away out and the parasite queen has a brood that is all her offspring.
In some other parasitic ant types, the intruder queen eliminates the incumbent herselfMatricide, or offspring eliminating their mom, is uncommon in nature, and when it does occur it tends to be for the advantage of the types, like a bulge earwig (Anechura harmandimom offering herself up as food for her nymphsor wasps eliminating their queen in an effort to improve the variety within the nest.
In the case of these ants, just the parasite types earnings. “It’s a manipulative behavior that is selfish from the perspective of the social parasite. And what the resident workers do is a very dumb, non-adaptive thing to do,” Kronauer stated.
Chris Simms is an independent reporter who formerly operated at New Scientist for more than 10 years, in functions consisting of primary subeditor and assistant news editor. He was likewise a senior subeditor at Nature and has a degree in zoology from Queen Mary University of London. Over the last few years, he has actually composed various short articles forNew Scientistand in 2018 was shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the Association of British Science Writers awards.
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