Ant intelligence; evolution of pheromone communication (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, June 17, 2024, 16:51 (159 days ago) @ David Turell

Ancient ants in amber:

https://www.science.org/content/article/early-ants-antennae-may-have-let-them-talk-usin...

"The antennae sprouting from ants’ heads aren’t just for show. The wiggly appendages sweep the air to detect pheromones that raise alarms, lay trails, and help the insects navigate their social lives. But although scientists think ants have always been social, they haven’t been able to say whether early ants used pheromones the way today’s ants do.

"Now, researchers have identified antennae in ancient ants entombed in amber that have the same microscopic, hairlike structures modern ants use to pick up chemical cues, the scientists report today in Science Advances. Not all experts are convinced this means Cretaceous ants, too, chatted via pheromones. But if they did, it could help scientists determine whether that ability helped the insects take over the world.

"Scientists have uncovered groups of individuals preserved next to each other in amber, for example. They’ve also discovered fossils of queens and workers from the same species dating back 99 million years, indicating a caste structure was already in place back then.

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"The amber was dated to roughly 100 million years ago. That’s nearly as old as ants themselves; the earliest evidence of the insects appears in the fossil records of France and Myanmar between 100 million and 105 million years ago.

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"Taken together, the researchers say, the findings imply that the earliest ants used their antennae to sense each other’s pheromones in a similar fashion as modern ants. Compared with earlier work, LaPolla says, “this is a more compelling bit of evidence that sociality was very much a feature of early ants.”

“'We [were already] quite confident that the earliest ants were social,” says Phil Barden, an evolutionary biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the study. “Now we can try to get our heads around how much chemical communication there was, and how similar it was to what we have today.”

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"Still, Barden and LaPolla say the study provides the best evidence yet that early ants may have communicated via chemical signals."

Comment: the rule is most species appear fully equipped for survival. These findings do not surprise me. Ants are amazing survivors all over the world. The entry today on intelligence would say they have evolved instincts for survival.