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The imposter approaches without detection. (Shimada et al., Curr. Biol., 2025)
While carnal mothers are known to sometimes dispatch of their young, precise fewer animals volition termination their ain mother: the attraction she gives is conscionable excessively valuable. But it turns retired immoderate ants tin beryllium tricked into matricide, sidesplitting their ain queen, and scientists person captured the chilling coup connected video.
This insurrection is orchestrated by an outsider ant – a parasitic queen from either the Lasius orientalis oregon L. umbratus species, who sneaks into a colony of L. flavus oregon L. japonicus ants earlier wreaking havoc.
Related: Ant Queens Produce Offspring of Two Different Species, Stunning Scientists
"Ants unrecorded successful the satellite of odors," says corresponding writer and behavioral ecologist Keizo Takasuka of Kyushu University successful Japan. "Before infiltrating the nest, the parasitic queen stealthily acquires the colony's odor connected her assemblage from workers walking extracurricular truthful that she is not recognized arsenic the enemy."
Once she is wrong the bowels of the colony, the parasitic ant attacks the nonmigratory queen by repeatedly spraying jets of fluid from an opening called an acidopore. Based connected the parasite's genus and method of fluid deployment, Takasuka and squad fishy the spray is formic acid.
"The parasitic ants exploit that quality to admit odors, we believe, by spraying formic acerb to disguise the queen's mean scent with a repugnant one. This causes the daughters, who usually protected their queen mother, to onslaught her arsenic an enemy," Takasuka says.
Mistaking their ain queen for an intruder, the idiosyncratic ants teardrop her apart. (Shimada et al., Curr. Biol., 2025)The parasite makes a quick, but impermanent getaway from the country of the crime, successful lawsuit immoderate traces of formic acerb stay connected her.
"She [the parasitic queen] knows the odor of formic acerb is precise dangerous, due to the fact that if big workers comprehend the odor they would instantly onslaught her arsenic well," Takasuka says.
The parasite volition repetition this behaviour arsenic galore times arsenic necessary, until the nonmigratory queen is dead. Then, successful the powerfulness vacuum near behind, she volition statesman laying eggs of her own, assuming reign implicit the colony. The workers, surprisingly, judge the caller regime, tending to the parasite's eggs and their caller matriarch.
It's different illustration of the benignant of deadly intrigue that regularly plays out connected the scale of insects each astir us.
The probe is published successful Current Biology.
