It would appear that pismire that are kept as striver by more powerful specie are n’t as helpless as they might appear . newfangled enquiry from Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany show that enslaved emmet conduct their own form of civil disobedience , by neglecting and kill the offspring of their oppressors . And by doing so , the ants may be preventing their comrades outside the nest from being enslaved themselves .
This discovery was made by ant investigator Susanne Foitzik who startle to celebrate this behavior back in 2009 . But what she has since key is that this is not an apart trick limited to one species ; over the course of her subject field , Foitzik has keep at least three dissimilar ant populations in which these acts of rising occur . It would appear , therefore , that it may be a fairly common means for enslave pismire to push back .
Ants such as Temnothorax longispinosus become enslave when workers from the hard worker - get ant colony , Protomognathus americanus , assail their nest . The parasitic schoolmaster ants kill the grownup of the subjugated population , and slip their offspring . Once back at their nest , the master ants thrust the new generation to flow and scavenge their larvae , thus compelling them to lift the offspring of their oppressors ( what ’s called “ brood parasitism ” ) .
At least up until a certain peak — but it would look that the enslave pismire have evolved a fairly potent countermeasure .
Foitzik observed that 95 % of the brood come through the larval degree — but thing change dramatically once the larvae bulge to pupate . At this point , the pupa give off a chemical substance signature that the enslaved ant recognizes as being foreign . In turn , the slave ant ignore and even outright kill the baby ants by tear them aside — as much as 65 % of them ( commonly , 15 % do n’t last ) . Foitzik ’s research even showed some natural selection pace that were as down in the mouth as 27 % .
understandably , the striver pismire are do a dispute — and at no benefit to themselves . But their free congener back home ( as much as it can be said that ant are “ free ” ) are clearly benefiting from their enslaved chum working behind the front lines . And in fact , slavemaker colony damage by hard worker sabotage have been notice to rise slow and modest slave - making colonies , while take fewer and less destructive hard worker raid .
What ’s specially fascinating about this discovery is that the enslave ants are not the one passing the “ destroy enemy pupa ” gene to the next generation . rather , this characteristic is arising and being reenforce among the barren ant .
This research was financed since October 2011 by the projection “ The evolution of resistance and virulency in structured populations ” fund by the German Research Foundation .
The entirestudycan be read at Evolutionary Ecology .
Image : Dr. Morley Read / Shutterstock .
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