Discover the key to the social status of ants

The fact that an ant becomes a powerful queen or a small worker ant depends on both nature and nurturing.

New research has found that the social status of ants in the team depends on both genetic inheritance and the food it eats as a child.

The researchers investigated the Florida ants (Pogonomyrmex badius) to find out which factors determine the social status of an ant.

Researcher Christopher R. Smith, a former graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, is an Arizona postdoctoral researcher who says: 'Basically what we discovered was complication. Genetic factors also contribute to determining status, but environmental factors also play a huge role. '

Research by biologist Andrew Suarez of the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign was published in the August issue of American Naturalist.

The male only mate and die

In society, P. badius has only one path for males. They were born only once a year and 'had no other role than mating and dying'.

For females there are 3 destiny for it: some will become queens while others will divide into two kinds of worker ants (main worker ant and assistant worker). The comment is 8 times heavier than the assistant worker, while the main worker is 4 times heavier than the assistant worker. However, the number of workers is only about 5% of worker ants.

Picture 1 of Discover the key to the social status of ants

The three positions of the females in the ant colony of Pogonomyrmex badius Florida include: queen ant, main worker ant and ant worker worker.(Photo: Adrian A. Smith)

In order to analyze the impact of genetic factors on status, scientists conducted a line test with 1,200 ants belonging to 8 different teams. They found that some breeds also have the advantage because the descendants of some of the fathers are likely to become queens while the offspring of some other fathers tend to become worker ants.

The scientists also explored the role of nutrition in determining social status by analyzing ants' diets in pupae stage - a transition to developing adult larvae. If the ant has a meaty diet, and eats prey at a farther place in the food chain, its body will have more than one type of nitrogen, especially compared to the ant that eats a lot of food of real origin object.

So ants will become the highest nitrogen ants in the body, which means they eat more species in a farther position in the food chain than the main worker ants, the main worker ants have a lot of nitrogen. than the assistant worker.

In this case, the researchers cannot say for sure whether the diet of the adult ants will help them get this position or the other, or is the difference in diet forming after ants have hatched or not, sometimes the status is determined in the larval stage.

Picture 2 of Discover the key to the social status of ants

The assistant worker of the ant ants harvested Florida is taking care of the pupae and larvae in the nest.(Photo: Chris Smith)

Smith said: 'All the evidence so far shows that qualitative differences in nutritional problems are related to determining status even though we still lack the final link to confirm that. really is the cause '.

Unanswered questions

Although the researchers found that both nature and nutrition play a certain role in determining an individual's social position, they still have not understood the details of how the two factors work. Perhaps both genetics and nutrition produce a hormonal response to determine whether ants will become worker ants or queen ants.

While a small number of insects live in society that determines their status entirely by genetic factors - all descendants of a male will become queen or queen while the offspring of the other males are all becoming worker ants or worker bees - scientists think that the discovery of Florida ants can be true for many other species.

Smith said : 'I think that in every species there is a mixture of the two. There are a few instances where nature completely prevails. But all of this shows us the existence of a combination of nature and nutrition in most social insects. '

He said it was an evolutionary advantage for species that allowed both elements to determine social status.

Smith told LiveScience: 'The benefits of populations have a nutritional factor that allows them to survive. They can change quickly and easily to better fit the environment. But there is a natural element that brings an advantage to the individual, as it can grow to gain fertility. This is a balance between what the individual wants and what the population wants'.

The research was funded by the Clark Foundation, the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Program at the University of Illinois, the University of Illinois Graduate School, Banks and Emerson Memorial Fund, and the National Science Foundation.

Update 17 December 2018

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