The ant queen's chemical crown

Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - 21:28 in Biology & Nature

The defining feature of social insects is that societies contain queens, which specialise in laying eggs, as well as workers, which are mostly infertile but take care of the offspring and the nest. However, when the queen dies or is re-moved, workers begin laying eggs of their own. Previous observations have suggested that queens possess a specific pheromone which keeps the workers infer-tile, but the pheromone has never been identified except in the well-studied honeybee. Queen pheromones have a lot to tell us about how sociality evolved. For example, if the pheromone was found to be brain-washing the workers into doing something that was bad for them, this would suggest that sociality is rife with hidden conflicts. Alternatively, the pheromone might be more like an advertise-ment that demonstrates to the workers that the queen is doing a good job. Workers that can smell that their queen is laying lots of...

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