Ants are often particularly aggressive against their neighbors – researchers call the the “nasty neighbor effect”. Our study lead by Melanie Bey shows that this can happen because ants remember the colonies they have been attacked by – and will later be more aggressive against them. This means that associative learning of colony odours, with
Category: press release
Amazon-like female warriors protect societies of farming ants
Large societies of ants and humans have standing armies with professional soldiers, but smaller societies usually rely on conscription when they are threatened. Leaf-cutting ant societies of intermediate size have evolved the peculiar practice of turning daughter queens that failed to mate and disperse into life time nest-defenders, reminiscent of mythical female warriors whose normal
Social insect sisters smell alike
This press release is also available in Danish (på Dansk). In social insect colonies, workers generally cooperate within extended families consisting of full- and half-sisters. It has been suggested that they do not behave nepotistically, i.e. prefer to cooperate with full-sisters only, because they are not able to distinguish between half- and full sisters Actually,