Thursday, April 19, 2012

The ant equivalent of our cattle industry


There is a very interesting phenomenon afoot in the tiny world of ants. It seems that much as human culture has developed a strong agricultural system, so have certain species of ants. In a manner similar to humans’ herding and maintenance of herds of cattle, ants also keep and farm groups of aphids.
The behavior is beneficial for both species. The ants are able to keep a sustainable and constantly available food source with the sugary and edible secretions of aphids, while the aphids, as a community on the whole, receive protection from outside prey.
Developments have been made in understanding how ants maintain these colonies specifically. According to research from the Royal Holloway University of London, the ants disperse small quantities of tranquilizer in each step. Thus areas where the ants walk the most as a population have the highest concentration of tranquilizer. This tranquilizer affects the aphids and slows their movement. In fact, the researchers found that aphid movement was measured to be slower on paper that ants had previously walked on, when compared to control paper that ants had not previously walked on. Using this tranquilizer methodology, the ants can rely on each other to keep the boundaries of aphid movement quite limited.
The researchers speculate that by releasing tranquilizers from their feet, ant populations are better able to control the movement of aphids and make sure that they don’t stray too far; in doing this ants are ensuring the continuity of their honeydew food source. From the aphids’ perspective, its not a bad deal either, because as long as they stay in the proximity of the ants, they are less susceptible to predation, as ants will fend away another potential predators such as ladybugs.
Check out the article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.htm




-RYAN GUPTA

1 comment:

  1. Interesting! Wasn't it previously thought that only organisms with large brains and high brain functions could conceive the idea of controlling a population of other organisms - i.e. the way we domesticated plants and animals and the way dolphins hunt by rounding up fish? Since ants have little more than a central nervous system, that throws the original idea out. :) I wonder what other organisms control other organisms in a livestock-like manner.

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