Slave ants rebel.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]Tiny ants enslaved inside acorns in the United States may resist their captors with an army of killer nannies. Ants in the genus Temnothorax fall prey to a species that doesn't do its own housework. Instead the do-little ants, Protomognathus americanus, raid smaller species' nests and steal babies. These youngsters grow up inside the acorn home of the slave-makers' queen, doing her housework and nursemaiding her young. Temnothorax sometimes fight raiders, but now Susanne Foitzik of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich suggests that post-enslavement resistance also evolves. In lab studies, slave nursemaids (pictured tearing up slave-maker young) killed some 80 percent of their captors' young queens and some 60 percent of the young workers, Foitzik reported at the International Behavioral Ecology Congress held in August at Cornell University.
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| Author: | Milius, Susan |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Science News |
| Article Type: | Brief article |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Sep 13, 2008 |
| Words: | 129 |
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