How Social Insects Recognize Dead Nestmates
Tuesday, May 5, 2009 - 12:14
in Biology & Nature
When an ant dies in an ant nest or near one, its body is quickly picked up by living ants and removed from the colony. The predominant understanding among entomologists was that dead ants release chemicals created by decomposition that signal their death to the colony's living ants. But entomologists working on Argentine ants provide evidence for a different mechanism for how necrophoresis -- the removal of dead nestmates from colonies -- works.