25 avril 2018
Why freeloader baby-eating ants are welcomed to the colony [Phys]
It might seem surprising that a colony of ants would tolerate the type of guests that gobble both their grub and their babies.
But new research shows there’s likely a useful tradeoff to calmly accepting these parasite ants into the fold : They have weaponry that’s effective against their host ants and a more menacing intruder ant. The study appears online in the journal Animal Behaviour.