Matthew Sparks receives funding from a PhD studentship through an EPSRC UKRI Doctoral Training Partnership between Swansea University and Rentokil Initial under the name 'Characterisation and ...

If you’ve heard the hammering of a woodpecker in the woods, you might have wondered how the birds can be so forceful. What does it take to whack your head against a tree repeatedly, hard enough to ...

The black parasitic ant tricks the workers into attacking their amber queen. Current Biology / Takasuka et al. Ants are no strangers to violence. Sometimes, an outsider queen will attack a colony’s ...

Ants are known for living in a matriarchal society, as worker ants are devoted to their queen mother. However, a new study has revealed surprising insights about this society and how, despite the ...

Ant pupae that are fatally sick don’t hide their condition; instead, they release a special scent that warns the rest of the ...

For some would-be ant queens, the easiest way to take over a colony is to dupe its worker ants into committing regicide. The scientist E.O. Wilson once wrote that ants are the most warlike of all ...

Scientists document a rare form of social parasitism in which invading queens weaponize chemistry and worker ants to dethrone their queen mother.

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A sneaky, stealthy parasite queen can turn an ant colony against itself. Newly-mated queens of two parasitic ant species have been found to sneak into an ant colony, creep towards the resident ant ...

Scientists say they have for the first time unlocked how a parasitic ant uses chemical warfare to take over the nest of a different species, by tricking workers into an unlikely assassination. The ...

Experts discovered an unusual form of regicide in which a parasitic ant queen tricks workers in a colony into turning on their own mother. By Rebecca Dzombak Rebecca Dzombak previously reported on ...