In the photo: Common ant of the species Pheidole morrisi (left) and genetically modified (right)
Geneticists continue to play God. Canadian scientists from the University of Montreal have created monster ants. They differ from normal insects by huge heads and frightening jaws
The scientists' goal was to better understand how ants and possibly other social insects assign roles. The impetus for the study was a find on Long Island in New York state - 8 super-soldier ants Pheidole morrisi with very large heads, which is an atavism. According to Echad Abuhaif from McGill University, scientists wanted to show that atavisms under certain conditions are not a kind of "return to the origins", but, on the contrary, can give an impetus to evolution. Supersoldiers differ from regular soldiers in their larger heads and jaws. They can gnaw larger seeds, and during an attack on an anthill, they block the entrances with their heads.
Pheidole morrisi ants have two types of workers: the workers themselves, who forage, look after the eggs, and take care of the queen; and soldiers guarding the anthill and gnawing the collected seeds due to the peculiarities of the structure of the jaws, which the workers then grind into flour and make food from it. These ants do not have super-soldiers, as, for example, the other 8 of the 1100 species of the genus Pheidole.
Scientists have concluded that breeding super-soldiers can lift the veil over the social life of ants. To do this, the researchers observed the development of larvae of two of the species, where there are super-soldiers (ants found in New York were killed in the laboratory by other ants). It turned out that the place in the ant castes is determined by the conditions for the development of the larva. Adult ants can interfere with this process by applying certain hormones at various stages. At the first stage, this determines whether the individual will become a queen or a worker, at the second - a worker or a soldier.
During the experiment, biologists added a substance that acts like the aforementioned hormones to the larvae of three species, which do not naturally develop super-soldiers. The artificially obtained individuals, however, were different from the usual super-soldiers. In particular, they retained the small wings that regular super soldiers shed when they mature.
