Ants, which are eusocial insects, have long intrigued scientists as a model for cooperation inside a colony where they nurse the young, gather food and defend against intruders. Most recently, ants ...

In Florida carpenter ant colonies, distinct worker castes called minors and majors exhibit pronounced differences in social behavior throughout their lives. In a new study, a multi-institution team ...

In the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, Claire Morandin et al. performed molecular evolutionary analyses on the egg yolk forming protein, Vitellogenin, and its many forms, ...

In Florida carpenter ant colonies, distinct worker castes called minors and majors exhibit pronounced differences in social behavior throughout their lives. In a new study published today in Science, ...

Novel or highly modified genes play a major role in the development of the different castes within ant colonies. Evolutionary biologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) came to this ...

Ant colonies act like fortresses, protecting the bounty within from marauding invaders. Some animals have evolved blunt tools such as large claws to tear into the nests, but others have evolved far ...

"The ant colony is a heavily guarded, nearly impenetrable fortress rich with bountiful resources. Intruders attempting to infiltrate the ant society are immediately discovered via chemical cues, ...

PHILADELPHIA - By comparing two species of ants, Shelley Berger, PhD, the Daniel S. Och University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues Danny Reinberg, PhD, New York University, ...

Figure 1: ADAR in the leaf-cutting ant A. echinatior and other sequenced genomes. Figure 2: RNA-editing sites identified in samples of gynes, large workers and small workers of A. echinatior. Figure 3 ...

Researchers have performed molecular evolutionary analyses on the egg yolk forming protein, Vitellogenin, and its many forms, amongst seven Formica ant species. Vitellogenin (Vg) is known to play a ...