In this article entitled Slave rebellion is
widespread in ants I learned quite a bit in how ants behave and how they react with other ants. Supposedly, ants that are held hostage in other ant species nests damage the other ants by acts of sabotage.
More than half of all animal species exploit their hosts.The American slave-making ant "Protomognathus americanus" is a social parasite that is dependent on the other ant species for survival. Slave working ants have to attend the brood in parasite nests and bring food to their higher ups and feed them, and also defend the nest. These ants become slaves when working ants attack the nests of the host species "Temnothorax longispinosus", kill the adult ants, and steal the brood. In the masters' nest, which is located in hollow acorns, nutshells, or twigs, the brood behavior of the emerging slave workers is exploited to the advantage of the slavemaker species.
"Probably at first the slaves cannot tell that the larvae belong to another species," explains Foitzik. As a result, 95 percent of the brood survives the larval stage. But the situation changes as soon as the larvae pupate. "The pupae, which already look like ants, bear chemical cues on their cuticles that can apparently be detected. We have been able to show that a high fraction of the slavemaker pupae are killed by slave workers." The pupae are either neglected or actively killed by being attacked and torn apart. Several slaves at once may assault a pupa, which is unable to move or defend itself during the pupal stage and is also not protected by a cocoon." This was a copied quote with more information explaining Fiotziks theories about the slave and working ants. Now you know the extremely difficult and long names of ant species and really what ants act like and how they survive if need be.
After reading Ryan Gosin’s review on “Slave Rebellion in Ants”, I found many positive attributes to his review. One thing that Ryan did well was simply choosing an article that is thoroughly interesting as it never occurred to me that ant’s lives were this complicated. In addition, Ryan also backed up the statements he made about the ants with credible sources such as Dr. Susanne Foitzik, a professional in the study of ants. Also, the quotes that Ryan used gave the article validity.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to change anything about the article, I would refer to ants by a different name other than parasite. This is due to the fact that parasites live in or on other organisms and ants do not do this. Another thing I would change is by giving the quotes that were used in the review context because they seem to be out of nowhere.
This article and review was very interesting in that it shined light into the social aspects of ants. I never knew that ants were this advanced in socializing as some of the different behaviors of ants are very similar to human behavior in that slavery is apparent in both populations. It leads me to ask myself what other behaviors ants and humans may share and what other species of insects or animals share ants behaviors.