Silky ants appear to hunt out dietary treatments when they’re sick
YongXin Zhang / Alamy
Some ants deal with their very own infections by consuming aphids containing an antiseptic ingredient.
In earlier laboratory experiments, silky ants (Formica fusca) with fungal infections chose to eat food laced with hydrogen peroxide as an alternative of their regular meals. Hydrogen peroxide is dangerous to the ants, however may also help them defend towards pathogens.
“Some aphids also contain hydrogen peroxide,” says Jason Rissanen on the College of Graz in Austria. “So that led us to look into whether aphids could be a possible source of medication for ants too.”
Rissanen and his colleagues collected 30 wild silky ant nests in Finland and contaminated half of the ants with a dangerous fungus. They then introduced each teams with a regular meals mixture of agar and honey, in addition to two mixes supplemented with both a small or massive amount of crushed aphids.
The uninfected ants most popular the usual combine, however the contaminated ants bought as much as 50 per cent of their meals from the high-aphid combine. After preventing off the fungal an infection, the ants would change again to the usual meals.
“We know that ants are really sensitive in detecting compounds and their concentrations in foods,” says Rissanen, who says that the ants appear to know the way a lot hydrogen peroxide to eat to kill the fungus with out overdosing.
Consuming from a wide range of sources, together with a considerable amount of the aphid-supplemented meals, was discovered to extend the sick ants’ possibilities of surviving the an infection. “In humans, it’s not enough to just eat medicine. We need a healthy overall diet to be cured from disease,” says Rissanen. “Aphids also have all sorts of lipids, proteins and amino acids that could also be part of the health benefit.”
Many different animals are recognized to self-medicate. Some chimpanzees, for instance, put insects onto open wounds, whereas fruit fly larvae consume alcohol to kill parasitic wasp eggs.
The group’s subsequent step is to have a look at how ants could use aphids as medicine in a extra pure set-up, says Rissanen.
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