How Trapjaw Ants Tell Each Other Apart (IMAGE)

North Carolina State University

How Trapjaw Ants Tell Each Other Apart

Caption

It had been thought that all ants, wasps and other eusocial insects used a common class of chemical compounds to distinguish queens from workers and other members of their colonies or hives. But new research looking at several trapjaw ant species finds that there is significant variation in these chemical signals, even between closely related species. This image shows a female worker (left) and male of the trapjaw ant species Odontomachus ruginodis.

Credit

Adrian Smith

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