Changes in behavior and gene expression show which worker will come out on top in the first days of a month-long battle between worker ants to establish new leadership after their queen dies, researchers report.
“Despite prolonged social upheaval in ant colonies following the loss of the queen, the winners of these dueling tournaments are rapidly determined,” says Claude Desplan, a professor of biology at New York University.
“Our findings may provide clues on adaptability in reproduction and aging, given that the workers who win the duel, or ‘pseudoqueens,’ gain the ability to lay eggs and live much longer than the average worker ant. This suggests that changes in the environment are able to dramatically affect the structure of a society.”
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In Dueling Ants Vying to Become Replacement Queen, Behavioral and Molecular Cues Quickly Determine Who Will Win
“Pseudoqueens” rapidly emerge after social structure is disrupted by the loss of queen
In Indian jumping ants, workers duel with their antennae to establish new leadership after the death of their queen. Photo credit: Giacomo Mancini, NYU
In one species of ants, workers duel to establish new leadership after the death of their queen. While these sparring matches stretch for more than a month, changes in behavior and gene expression in the first three days of dueling can accurately predict who will triumph, according to a New York University study published in the journal Genes & Development.
7 January 2021 Visual hallucinations in people who have lost their sight can stem from spontaneous activity in the brain’s visual centres, according to a study led by UCL and Weizmann Institute of Science researchers.
The study, published in
Brain, investigated why some people who have lost their eyesight experience vivid hallucinations, a condition called Charles Bonnet syndrome.
The researchers were studying slow, spontaneous fluctuations, which appear unconsciously in our brains when we rest. The research team was seeking to understand whether unprompted behaviours, that occur without any external cause, might be triggered by these spontaneous brain fluctuations.
People experiencing Charles Bonnet visual hallucinations presented the research team with a rare opportunity to investigate their hypothesis. This is because in Charles Bonnet syndrome, the hallucinations appear at random, in a truly unprompted fashion, and the vis