Not Exactly Rocket Science : The rebellion of the ant slaves

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The rebellion of the ant slaves

Humans aren't the only species that have had to deal with the issue of slavery. Some species of ants also abduct the young of others, forcing them into labouring for their new masters. These slave-making ants, like Protomagnathus americanus conduct violent raids on the nests of other species, killing all the adults and larva-napping the brood.

When these youngsters mature, they take on the odour of their abductors and become the servants of the enslaving queen. They take over the jobs of maintaining the colony and caring for its larvae even though they are from another species; they even take part in raids themselves. But like all slave-traders, P.americanus faces rebellions.

Some of its victims (ants from the genus Temnothorax) strike back with murderous larvae. Alexandra Achenbach and Susanne Foitzik from Ludwig Maximillians Universty in Munich found that some of the kidnapped workers don't bow to the whims of their new queen. Once they have matured, they start killing the pupae of their captors, destroying as many as two-thirds of the colony's brood.

Ants that are targeted by slave-makers take massive hits to their colonies and they are under intense pressure to resist these marauders. But all the defences discovered so far happen before the raids have been successfully completed. They involve better fighting skills, quicker reaction times when enemies are spotted, hastier escapes and so on.

Some scientists have suggested that strategies like this would be impossible to develop because the enslaved workers are caught in an evolutionary trap. Far away from their own colony, and sterile themselves, there is no way for them to increase their reproductive success. But Achenbach and Foitzik have rejected this idea - their conclusion is that by conducting assassinations within their new home, they severely reduce the slave-makers' ...

Original URL

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/04/the_rebellion_of_the_ant_slaves.php

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/04/the_rebellion_of_the_ant_slaves.php