A Tiny Ant Brain Is Still Too Big for Reproduction
For most ant species, nothing spells apocalypse quite like the death of a queen. A colony stripped of its monarch, the group’s only fertile female and the sole source of eggs, quickly unravels, then dies—an entire society snuffed out. The captain does not go down with her ship; the ship goes down with her captain.
Indian jumping ants do not abide by such dictatorial dramatics. They’ve evolved a work-around to indefinitely forestall their colonies’ demise. Within hours of their queen’s death, female workers will begin to joust, fencing with their antennae, and nipping at each other’s heads. These dominance tournaments can last for more than a month, until, at long last, a dozen or so champions triumph. While the losers slink away to resume their workerly duties,). The queen phase of the colony ends, and the gamergate phase begins: Monarchy transforms into oligarchy, and new gamergates step up as each generation dies. In this way, “colonies can be immortal, theoretically,” Clint Penick, an entomologist at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, told me. They have been, so far, in the labs where he’s studied them.
