Parasitic ant queen chemically manipulates staff into killing their mom

[ad_1] Scientists say they've for the primary time unlocked how a parasitic ant makes use of chemical warfare to take over the nest of a distinct species, by tricking staff into an unlikely assassination.

The lethal scheme unfolds like a Shakespearean drama. In an ant colony, the queen is dying, beneath assault by her personal daughters. In the meantime, the true enemy — an invader queen from one other ant species — waits on the sidelines. Her plan is straightforward: Infiltrate the nest and use chemical weapons brewed inside her physique to deceive the employee ants into mistaking their rightful ruler for an imposter.

In a couple of hours, the nest’s queen will fall. As soon as the previous matriarch is lifeless, the invader will assume the function of the colony’s new chief.

Matricide in an ant colony shouldn't be unprecedented — it sometimes occurs when a colony produces a number of queens or when a solo queen reaches the top of her fertility. However this explicit state of affairs, by which an outsider queen turns staff into her proxy assassins, has by no means been described intimately earlier than, researchers reported Monday within the journal Current Biology .

Actually, this technique is but to be documented in every other animal species, stated the examine’s senior writer Dr. Keizo Takasuka, an assistant professor within the division of biology on the College of Kyushu in Japan.

“Inducement of daughters to kill their organic mom had not been recognized in biology earlier than this work,” Takasuka informed CNN in an e mail.

The researchers noticed this habits amongst ants within the Lasius genus, documenting invasions and employee manipulation by queens within the species L. orientalis and L. umbratus.

“Prior research had reported that, after a brand new L. umbratus queen invaded a number colony of L. niger, host staff killed their very own queen,” Takasuka stated. “However the mechanism remained fully unknown till our examine.”

Ants talk by odor, which is how they distinguish between nestmates and foes. When researchers beforehand noticed parasitic ant queens close to a colony’s foraging trails, they noticed that the parasite would snatch up a employee ant and rub it on her physique, disguising her scent and permitting her to slide into the nest undetected.

For the brand new examine, coauthors Taku Shimada and Yuji Tanaka — each citizen scientists in Tokyo — every raised an ant colony and launched parasitic queens. Shimada noticed an L. orientalis queen in an L. flavus colony, and Tanaka recorded an L. umbratus queen invading a colony of L. japonicus.

In each experiments, the scientists first co-housed an invading queen with host staff and cocoons “in order that she acquired the nestmate odour,” Takasuka stated. “This allowed her to achieve nestmate recognition and keep away from retaliation upon entry.” The scientists then launched the queen into the colony.

Each parasite queens adopted an identical plan of assault. After disguising their odor, the queens entered the colonies’ feeding areas. Most staff ignored the interloper. Some even fed her mouth-to-mouth.

However the invading queens weren’t there for dinner — that they had an assassination to set in movement. After finding the resident queen, the invader sprayed her with stomach fluid that smelled of formic acid. The scent agitated staff, with a few of them turning on their queen instantly and attacking her. A number of sprays adopted, and the assaults turned extra brutal.

“The host staff finally mutilated their true mom after 4 days,” the scientists reported.

The demise of the true queen was the invader’s cue to begin producing a whole bunch of eggs, attended by her newly adopted “daughters.” Over time, her organic daughters would quantity within the 1000's, usurping the colony till not one of the unique species remained.

“It’s refreshing to see a really cautious observational examine that discovers one thing attention-grabbing that we — ‘we’ that means ant researchers — suspected however had by no means confirmed,” stated Dr. Jessica Purcell, a professor within the division of entomology on the College of California, Riverside.

“I used to be actually struck by this discovery, particularly using a chemical compound to elicit that habits by the employees,” stated Purcell, who was not concerned within the analysis.

Social bugs like ants collect and retailer sources for the colony to share. That makes them a lovely goal for social parasites — species searching for well-stocked nests that they will exploit. Some ant species kidnap the colony’s offspring and enslave them. Others, reminiscent of L. orientalis and L. umbratus, arrange store within the colony, the place they remove the present queen and take her place.

“There’s all of this superb variety,” Purcell informed CNN. “What we didn’t know so much about earlier than this examine, is the varied ways in which socially parasitic queens may go about assassinating the host queen. Folks had accomplished some observations of direct killing the place the infiltrating queen would go and minimize off the top of the present queen. However that is astonishing that they will really use chemical manipulation to trigger the employees to do it.”

Violence inside households is commonly described in fairy tales and myths, with depraved adults — sometimes determined mother and father or jealous stepparents — conspiring to hurt or kill kids. Rapunzel is imprisoned in a tower; Snow White is hunted after which poisoned by an apple; Hansel and Gretel are deserted within the forest and captured by a witch, who imprisons them and fattens Hansel for her supper.

However whereas such tales embody loads of violence, the killing of a mom in folklore — not to mention kids being tricked into matricide — is sort of nonexistent, stated Dr. Maria Tatar, a professor emerita of folklore and mythology at Harvard College who was not concerned within the new examine.

In that respect, Takasuka famous, the grim story of the invading, manipulative ant queens stands out much more.

“Generally, phenomena in nature outstrip what we think about in fiction,” he stated.

Mindy Weisberger is a science author and media producer whose work has appeared in Stay Science, Scientific American and How It Works journal. She is the writer of “ Rise of the Zombie Bugs : The Shocking Science of Parasitic Thoughts-Management.”