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Return of the Super Ants
from Nature News
An entire genus of ants, comprising more than 1,000 species, has been found to have a hidden ability to make 'supersoldiers'--larger-than-average soldier ants that defend the nest against invaders. And all it takes is a dab of hormone.
A few ant species of the Pheidole genus were already known to produce supersoldiers that deter invading army ants by blocking nest entrances with their enormous heads. Scientists have only ever seen these supersoldiers in 8 out of 1,100 Pheidole species. But a new study now makes it clear that the entire genus has the potential to create this subset of the generic worker caste.
The eight species that routinely produce supersoldiers are found only in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. But Ehab Abouheif, a developmental biologist at Canada's McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, who led the study, spotted the same oversized individuals among colonies of a ninth species, Pheidole morrisi, found in New York. "I've been collecting these things for 15 years. One day, I was looking at a wild colony and saw that it contained these monstrous soldiers," he says. "They have larger jaws. If they get you between the fingers, it really hurts."
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