Young, infected Lasius neglectus ants will send out an altruistic "kill me" signal to worker ants, a new study finds, as part ...

When infected by a fungal disease, ant pupae actively emit a chemical cue that prompts workers to get rid of them for the ...

Deep inside an ant nest, some of the youngest members are primed to die for the group. When infection strikes, these baby ...

The research focused on Lasius neglectus, a species of garden ant. Unlike adult workers, which can leave the nest to die when they are gravely ill, young pupae are immobile and remain sealed in ...

Ant species that evolved thinner shells traded individual armor protection for increases in colony size, University of ...

The emergent complexity of ant societies is one of the most fascinating phenomena in the natural world: how do these tiny creatures form such intricate social networks? These networks are so nuanced ...

Species with thinner protective barriers may need fewer resources and tend to have a greater ability to adapt to new habitats ...

In animals, nature frequently oscillates between producing a multitude of less hardy individuals and creating a limited number of very robust specimens. This trade-off between number and ...

Some ants thrive by choosing numbers over strength. Instead of heavily protecting each worker, they invest fewer resources in individual armor and produce far more ants. Larger colonies then ...

Biologist E.O. Wilson once wrote that "ants are the most warlike of all animals," noting that clashes between ant colonies dwarfed the human battles at Waterloo and Gettysburg. But sometimes ant ...