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Of royal corruption in the ant world

London: When studying social insects such as ants, scientists have been amazed by the cooperative aspects of their communities. A new study, however, has found evidence that certain ants are able to cheat the system, in order to ensure that their offspring become reproductive queens rather than sterile workers.

“It was thought that ants were an exception, but our genetic analysis has shown that their society is also rife with corruption — and royal corruption at that,” said Bill Hughes from University of Leeds’ Faculty of Biological Sciences.

He said the accepted theory was that queens were produced solely by nurture. “Certain larvae were fed certain foods to prompt their development into queens and all larvae could have that opportunity,” he explains.

“But we carried out DNA fingerprinting on five colonies of leaf-cutting ants and discovered that the offspring of some fathers are more likely to become queens than others. These ants have a ‘royal’ gene or genes, giving them an unfair advantage and enabling them to cheat many of their altruistic sisters out of their chance to become a queen themselves,” he said of the study, set to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research work was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and carried out in collaboration with Professor Jacobus Boomsma of the University of Copenhagen. — PTI

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