A nutritious fluid secreted by pupating ants helps to feed the rest of the colony, and could play a part in the evolution of social structures.
, reveals that as pupae — an otherwise inactive developmental stage — ants produce a nutrient-rich fluid that is consumed by both adults and larvae.
“We identified a mechanism that unites the colony, binding ants across developmental stages — adults, larvae and pupae — into a coherent entity, the superorganism,” says co-author Orli Snir, a biologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City. Snir and her colleagues made the discovery by observing clonal raider ants kept in isolation at different stages of their life cycle, to investigate what makes ant colonies so integrated.
By injecting blue food dye into the pupae and tracing where it ended up, the researchers showed that adult ants drink the fluid as it is secreted, and also help their larvae to drink it by carrying them to the pupae. This stops the fluid accumulating. “The adults are doing parental care as they’re cleaning the pupae, taking the larvae and placing them on the pupae to feed,” says Snir.
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