Why Worker Ants Turn Into Warrior Queens: Dopamine?

Gamergates look like ordinary workers but inside things are changing: their brains shrink by 25 percent, their ovaries expand to fill their abdomens and their life expectancy jumps from months to years. Why? Researchers wanted to find out. So they took some workers from a colony and separated them from their gamergates. These workers effectively formed their own colony and began fighting to establish dominance. When some of the workers in the new colony (Colony B) began to get the upper hand, they were removed. They found that these dominant ants had begun to produce elevated levels of dopamine – more than other workers, though less than full-fledged gamergates. read more

Read the whole article on

More from