Cheating ants ousted by chemistry

The want to reproduce is the most natural instinct in the animal world except - it would seem - for ants.

In ant society, loyalty to the queen remains paramount. Worker ants are expected to sacrifice parenthood to babysit the queen’s offspring who are their brothers and sisters. In this dictatorship, if worker ants are caught baby-making then their peers swiftly attack and physically restrain them.
By studying the dutiful behaviour of the worker ants, a team of biologists from Arizona State University discovered just how the reproductive cheaters get caught by their peers. It all comes down to chemistry - ants use cuticular hydrocarbon signals to distinguish between eggs laid by the queen and the workers. Jurgen Liebig and his team from Arizona suspected that these hydrocarbons might also identify the ants that just can’t keep it in their pants.
To test the idea, the team framed innocent non-reproducing ants by applying a synthetic compound typical of fertile individuals. As suspected, the ants who had been set up received a less than warm welcome from their nestmates when the queen was around. Without their leader, the ants (hydrocarbons or not) reproduced without incident thus proving the concept.
The cuticular hydrocarbons provide a reliable identification method. Ants unfaithful to the queen are caught in a quandary – they can’t separate their own hydrocarbons from those of their eggs and yet masking their own fertility would mean displaying the chemicals of a worker, but their eggs are best hidden if they seem like those of the queen.
Liebig said, “This system for catching cheaters plays an important role in maintaining harmony in the ant world and it sets an example that we might learn from ourselves.”
I shall leave it to your imagination as to how this societal model could work in the human civilisation.

By Leila Sattary