If you have the grippe , it will benefit you — and your fellow — to stay home until you recover . The same concept apparently applies to emmet , which essentially take a sick solar day when they ’ve been exposed to harmful pathogens , Newsweekreports .
These Modern findings , write in the journalScience , come from a team of researchers in Austria and Switzerland . The researchers used infrared cameras to track the motion of more than 2200 garden ants in 22 dissimilar colonies . Ten percent of the insects were disclose toMetarhizium brunneumspores — a type of fungus that served as a pathogen among the ants .
Ants that had been exposed to the fungus altered their interactions with other ants to prevent the gap of a potentially calamitous disease throughout the colony . " The coterie among ants become even stronger , and contact between cliques is reduced , " Sylvia Cremer of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria read in astatement . " Foragers interact more with foragers , and suckle more with nanny . This is a reply by the whole dependency — animate being who are not themselves treat with spore also change their behavior . "
In other words , the disclose ants change their behavior to protect their age bracket , especially worthful phallus like the pansy and nurse ants ( young worker emmet which help deal for infant ants ) . They do n’t decimate the photo solely , but merely determine it . This actually works in the ants ' favor . A gloomy dose of the pathogen can assist the other ants build up immunity , which " can be compared to the process of vaccination in humanity , " run author Nathalie Stroeymeyt toldNewsweek . A high back breaker , on the other hired man , can kill an ant within nine twenty-four hour period .
It ’s ill-defined whether the ants actually stopped lick during the experiment because only their locating , not their specific behaviour , were examine . But Stroeymeyt enounce their habit of set apart themselves " would be corresponding to take a day off workplace in the sense that they decreased their contact with contaminated co - workers . "
[ h / tNewsweek ]
