Parasitic ant methods employees into killing their queen, then usurps her

A kind of parasitic ant takes over the colonies of a associated species by inciting the employees to kill their queen, then taking her place.

Round 230 species of ants are thought-about parasites – they lay their eggs in different species’ colonies or steal their larvae and pupae. Some kill the host queens earlier than laying their very own eggs and convincing the employees to serve them as a substitute.

Keizo Takasuka at Kyushu College in Fukuoka, Japan, and his colleagues seen that, when a queen of the parasitic species Lasius orientalis was by accident launched into the nest of its relative, Lasius flavus, the flavus employees would then kill their very own queen – their mom.

Many parasitic queens are killed by employees as soon as they’re found, however some get by the colony’s defences, apparently by cloaking themselves within the scent of the colony.

To watch how the parasitic queens succeeded, the researchers assisted them by cloaking the feminine intruders with the scent of the employee ants earlier than introducing them to the colony.

“It’s harking back to the zombie tv collection, The Strolling Useless, the place characters smear themselves with walker blood to move by a horde — it includes camouflage that always fails, and people who are uncovered are killed brutally,” says Takasuka.

As soon as the parasite will get into the colony, she sprays the rival queen with a chemical, considered formic acid, from an orifice on the tip of her stomach.

The employees interpret this chemical as a hazard to the colony and instantly assault their queen as soon as they scent it. Nonetheless, the method is gradual, taking a number of sprays and lots of assaults from her employees earlier than the queen is ultimately killed. Then the parasitic queen can lay her personal eggs, that are tended to by the employees.

“If the parasitism succeeds, it permits the brand new queen to move by the susceptible founding part much more safely than founding a colony alone,” says Takasuka. “I believe this technique could also be extra widespread than we at the moment admire.”

Chris Reid at Macquarie College in Sydney, Australia, says the complicated behaviours of ants are troublesome to watch as a result of they happen within the privateness of the underground nest.

“This sort of pure historical past detective work is significant for enhancing our understanding of those tremendous vital bugs,” says Reid. “Additional research may even result in new methods to focus on the queens of invasive ant species, that are one of many largest challenges going through ecosystems worldwide.”